Are the odds stacked against the 2021 Pittsburgh Steelers?
The 2021 NFL season is looming, and preseason play is now underway, with only a few more weeks until the regular season kicks off.
That doesn’t leave a lot more time for many teams, including the Steelers, to iron out their biggest hurdles for the upcoming season. Among those challenges are what appears to be a hyper-competitive division, with three AFC North teams, including the Steelers and rivals, the Baltimore Ravens, and Cleveland Browns, all looking to compete for the crown.
Let’s take a look at the AFC North, the upcoming NFL season odds, and other factors related to how well the Black and Gold might perform this year.
AFC North odds to win the division
The Baltimore Ravens still rule the roost in the AFC North, at least as far as the betting odds are concerned.
The Ravens come in at +115 on sites like DraftKings to get a guaranteed spot in the postseason.
The Cleveland Browns are just behind the Baltimore Ravens at +150 to walk away as newly crowned division champions. Their price got smaller as the franchise filled gaps on defense during the offseason, while the opening price on the Pittsburgh Steelers got a little larger: moving from around 335 to the current price of +450.
The red-headed stepchild of the AFC North, the Cincinnati Bengals, are longshots at +2500. Many experts predict that Cincy hasn’t improved this offseason and report that Joe Burrow’s return from injury is shaky at best, as most believing that the Bengals won’t compete in the division this season.
As noted above, six games within the division, including two apiece against the Ravens and Browns, is a bumpy path for the Steelers path to the playoffs.
Projected win totals
Top sportsbooks list the Ravens with a regular-season wins projection of 11 games. However, they are not the only squad in the AFC North projected to hit double-digit win numbers.
Experts predict the Browns will hit 10 wins, while the Steelers have a line of Nine wins.
Over or Under?
All it takes is one extra win and one extra loss for the Browns and Steelers to swap spots – and potentially catch the Ravens projected totals.
That said, we may see the Steelers struggle if we are to take the OVER/UNDER prices into consideration. UNDER 9 games is the favorite for Pittsburgh, meaning that bookies are leaning towards an 8-win season. (Yuck!) Meanwhile, the Browns are favored to go OVER 10 wins, and the Ravens are just barely favored to go UNDER 11 wins.
So, does this mean the Steelers will be chasing the Browns this season? Or the Ravens?
The Steelers Offense
The Steelers offensive line is what seems to be the biggest determining factor in these projections. With a batch of new starters, many analysts feel that the line won’t be that good this year.
Yet, the same analysts are giving a pass to the Baltimore Ravens, a team that is also making many of the same moves as the Steelers. The Ravens said goodbye to Marshal Yanda, who retired this offseason – replacing him with 31-year-old Kevin Zeitler. They are working on moving their other guard to center (sound familiar?) and using a rookie, third-round pick in his place.
Ronnie Stanley is rehabbing an injury at the one tackle position (sound familiar?) and the other is manned by Alejandro Villanueva, who is getting panned for not playing well in camp: he was also panned for being a weak link on the Steelers line last season too.
Add a second-year runner in J.K. Dobbins, i.e. a young running back, and I see the Ravens having a lot of similarities to the Steelers. Baltimore had the league’s worst passing offense in 2020 while Pittsburgh has the worst run game.
The key cog in the machine is the quarterbacks
Lamar Jackson is a former league MVP and an offensive weapon, but will teams have him figured out? Has Ben Roethlisberger found the fountain of youth at age 39?
The Steelers offense leaves some doubts to those who set the sports betting odds, but I still see Pittsburgh as being more equal than some do. With Najee Harris and Pat Freiermuth added to the existing offensive arsenal, all we have to hope for is that the O-line plays better than it did last year.
Oh, and an X-Factor: new offensive coordinator Matt Canada should be able to keep the offense from getting too stagnant.
I know: a lot of challenges in one section here, but they’re all unequivocally linked together too.
Tough Schedules
I’m skipping the Steelers defense and special teams, which should remain the standard – and flipping right to the other big challenge for 2021: the schedule.
By virtue of the their winning the AFC North last season, the Steelers drew, at least on paper, the league’s toughest schedule for 2021.
However, a lot of the analysts making predictions have overlooked that their key competition, the Ravens and Browns, play a near identical schedule as well. The only difference between the Steelers and their division rivals are three of the now seventeen games scheduled.
The Steelers draw the Bills, Titans and Seahawks as their three games which differ, while the Ravens get the Dolphins, Colts and Rams, and the Browns receive the Patriots, Texans and Cardinals.
As you can see, all of those games could present problems for each of these franchises, making none of the AFC North slate a cake walk.
So long as the Steelers can overcome some of the same common opponents on the schedule, such as road trips to Green Bay and Kansas City, they could surprise, and upset, those who are betting against them.
