At 0-3, most teams will have a plethora of excuses already in hand to explain why they aren’t successful.
In Pittsburgh, those include injuries, a questionable offensive coordinator and a bad offensive line. This week should be different though shouldn’t it?
Le’Veon Bell is expected to play for the first time in his career and may even start according to some reports although I think Felix Jones gets the nod. Cortez Allen may return from his ankle injury that has cost him the last two games and Heath Miller is a full ‘go’ which means no limit on plays as he had last week.
Despite losing their third straight game, the Steelers’ offense actually showed some signs of life last week. Ben Roethlisberger threw for over 400 yards, Antonio Brown was excellent and the team rushed for more yards in the game than they had in the previous two.
The Steelers struggling offense will be going against the 29th ranked defense in the league. If they can’t get it done against them then what hope do we have?
The defense has been pretty good despite losing Larry Foote but they get gassed late in games because the offense has done them few favors in terms of keeping them rested.
Looking across the field will be the Minnesota Vikings who will have a less than 100% Christian Ponder under center. He was diagnosed with a rib injury but will play. He will lead the NFL’s 24th ranked passing offense against the Steelers’ 3rd ranked passing defense.
In a battle of 0-3 teams where the Steelers are the official road team despite there being an exceedingly high number of fans in black n gold, Pittsburgh shall have no excuses not to win this game.
Unless of course they use the old ‘jet-lag’ and ‘time difference’ excuse.
Marc Uhlmann writes for and co-owns www.steelcityblitz.com. Follow him on Twitter @steeldad and follow the website at @SCBlitz. He can be heard Mondays on Trib-Live Radio at 4pm ET talking Steelers.
