5 for Friday: History could be on side of Steelers

Jan 10, 2025 at 07:00 AM

Dale Lolley

Contributing Writer/Editor

Familiarity with divisional opponents is what makes for many of the great matchups that go into those games.

Entire offseasons are spent devising plans and building rosters in an effort to defeat the teams within your division.

That's with the idea that the two teams will play twice during the regular season. But meeting a third time? Well, that changes the dynamic.

The Steelers have played a divisional opponent in the postseason 12 times in their history, coming away with the victory in those games on 10 of those occasions. Saturday's playoff meeting with the Ravens in an AFC Wild Card game will mark the 13th divisional rematch in the postseason for the Steelers, and fifth against Baltimore.

The Steelers have won three of the previous four playoff meetings with the Ravens, but Saturday's game will be a little different than any other occasion in which they have played a divisional opponent for the third time.

Having faced the Ravens in Week 11, winning 18-16, and again in Week 16, losing 34-17, Saturday's game will mark the third meeting between the Steelers and Baltimore in a nine-week span. That is the quickest turnaround for the Steelers against a divisional opponent in team history for the third matchup.

That adds a little twist to things.

Certainly, both teams are very familiar with each other. But in this case, they have prepared to play against each other twice in a two-month period.

"I just think the more familiar you are, the more significant the strategic component is," said Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin. "But as a coach man, I welcome that. I want the responsibility of being a component of how this game unfolds and to try to stay a step ahead of them.

"I'm sure they have the same agenda regarding us. It doesn't get routine with each match up. It gets more sophisticated, it gets more complex, and from a coach's perspective, more fun."

That's a different perspective on meeting three times in so little time than Baltimore head coach John Harbaugh admitted to feeling about the game.

"I don't think there's any specific difficulty in it - this process is still the same," Harbaugh said. "You probably have certain things that are understood. There's a lot of things that have kind of been ingrained in your knowledge of a team in the division who you've already played twice, so your jumping-off point is further down the road for sure. That's about the only difference."

The Steelers have just been much more successful doing it.

While the Steelers are 10-2 the third time around against opponents, the Ravens are just 2-4 in such meetings, including 1-3 under Harbaugh, with the only win coming against the Steelers in 2014, a game in which Pittsburgh had lost star running back Le'Veon Bell the previous week in a win over the Bengals in the regular season finale.

This time around, it's the Ravens, who lost star wideout Zay Flowers to injury last week, who will be without a key offensive piece.

The Steelers have had success regardless of the head coach in such meetings. Tomlin is 3-2 in such games. Bill Cowher was 4-0. Chuck Noll was 3-0, with all three wins coming over the Oilers.

The Steelers are 2-0 against the Bengals in playoff games, 3-0 against the Oilers when they were a divisional opponent, 2-1 against the Browns and 3-1 against the Ravens.

This game will also mark the fourth time Tomlin and Harbaugh have faced off in a playoff game, the second-most in NFL history behind Chuck Noll and John Madden, who had five such meetings. Noll won three of the five.

This game will, however, mark the shortest amount of time the Steelers have had between the three meetings, beating the 1978 playoff game the Steelers played against the Houston Oilers.

In 1989, the Steelers and Oilers met in Weeks 7 and 13 before playing again on Wild Card Weekend, giving them 10 weeks between those three meetings.

The 1989 Steelers lost the two regular season meetings to Houston, 27-0 and 23-16, but shocked the Oilers, 23-20 in overtime at the Astrodome.

• The Steelers are the third team in NFL history to enter the playoffs on a losing streak of at least four games, meaning it's certainly a rarity.

Thing is, to have at least a four-game losing streak and still make the postseason means you did a lot of good things early in the season.

Recapturing that magic will go a long way toward whether or not you hang around longer or not.

In the case of the two previous teams to go to the postseason in such circumstances, the 1999 Lions did not. But the 1986 New York Jets, who actually lost their final five games, did advance in the postseason.

The Lions, who started the season 8-4, backed into the playoffs at 8-8 and lost a Wild Card game to Washington.

The Jets, meanwhile, are a more interesting case.

They opened the season 10-1, losing only to New England in Week 2 and rattling off nine consecutive victories after that.

Then, the Jets were smashed, 45-3, in Week 12 against the Dolphins, with several starters getting injured in the game.

"We had a good team and we were flying high," Jets quarterback Pat Ryan told the New York Daily News. "They were touting us as the best team in the AFC.

"Then we got blown out by Miami, got a few guys hurt and it just started spiraling and it went down fast. We were in a bad place."

A 17-3 loss to the Rams followed, with a 24-10 defeat at the hands of the 49ers coming after that.

The Steelers handed the Jets their fourth-consecutive loss in Week 16, 45-24, with the Bengals finishing off the five-game losing streak with a 52-21 smackdown.

The Jets turned the ball over a ridiculous 18 times during the losing streak and forced just six. During their 10-1 start, they had forced 32 turnovers and had lost 19, making them plus-13.

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Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Van Jefferson (11) during practice at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex preparing for a Wild Card matchup against the Baltimore Ravens, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 in Pittsburgh, PA. (Karl Roser / Pittsburgh Steelers)