Steelers’ fans rooting for Rex

How does it feel to be rooting for Rex Ryan?
If you’re a Steelers fan, you’re rooting for Ryan’s Bills to beat the New York Jets in Buffalo to give the Steelers a chance to make the playoffs.
I don’t bet on football, but if you were to force me to bet on that game straight up, I’d take the Bills.
They beat the Jets on the road in November and the Jets are still the Jets. New York has won five in a row against four bad teams and the Patriots, who gave them the gift of a kickoff to start overtime.
All the Steelers need to do is beat the stinking Browns in Cleveland and have the Bills take care of the Jets.
A no-brainer, right?
So was last week’s game in Baltimore, where the Browns did something the Steelers couldn’t do. They beat the Ravens there in Week 1.
The disaster in Baltimore notwithstanding, the Steelers have been good against bad teams. They’re 6-2 against teams with losing records, but three of those teams were missing their starting quarterback.
That makes them 3-4 against teams with winning records.
Two weeks ago, I thought the Steelers looked like a Super Bowl team because their offense looked unstoppable. It looked very stoppable in Baltimore.
After looking at what they did against the few good teams that they’ve played, on second thought, maybe they’re not.
Ben Roethlisberger is the guy who made their offense look unstoppable, but he hasn’t been very good against the type of teams he would see in the playoffs.
Against teams with losing records, Roethlisberger has 12 touchdown passes and five interceptions. Against the winners, he has six touchdowns and nine picks.
In his last three games, he has three touchdown passes and five interceptions. It would be six if one of the Ravens hadn’t lined up with his big toe offside on a 101-yard pick-6 that was called back last week.
That was one of two hideous interceptions Roethlisberger has thrown in the last two weeks. The other came with 2:07 left against the Broncos. Neither ended up hurting the Steelers but both are a little disturbing for a guy who hasn’t been very good in big games lately.
• Roethlisberger needs a playoff win.
If it doesn’t happen this year, it will be five years without one.
Mark Malone, Neil O’Donnell, Bubby Brister and Kordell Stewart didn’t go five years without one.
• With one week left in the season, there are 23 NFL quarterbacks with a passer rating above 90. Joe Montana’s career rating was 92. Johnny Unitas’ was 78. Terry Bradshaw’s was 70. Things have changed.
• The NCAA and/or ESPN did a really nice job of hiding the football playoff semifinal games. Whose idea was it to compete with New Year’s Eve? Ratings dropped 33 percent from last season. Why would anyone be surprised?
• Peyton Manning missed six games. He leads the NFL in interceptions with 17.
Eli Manning has 14, the same as Roethlisberger, but he has thrown thrown 144 more passes and has 33 touchdowns to Roethlisberger’s 18.
• Pitt losing to Navy in the Military Bowl is a major setback and a sign Pitt still has a long way to go.
• The media seem to be more than willing to accept the ridiculous claim by Charley Sly, the main source in Al Jazeera’s story about HGH use in the NFL. Sly came out with the, “I wasn’t telling the truth” claim before the story ran.
Too many in the media are willing to say they don’t care about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the NFL while also saying they are deeply concerned about concussions. They miss what should be an obvious point. Bigger players mean bigger collisions and more concussions.
It’s pathetic when you consider the media became much more interested in the effect PEDs had on home runs than they continue to be on the effect that they have on football players’ lives.
• Good to see Tom Donahoe was promoted to Senior Director of Player Personnel with the Philadelphia Eagles. He should never have been fired by the Steelers. The guy who deserved to be fired at the time was the head coach.
• Antonio Brown deserved to be named Steelers’ MVP. He’s the best player in the NFL.
Without him, they are no better than 8-8, regardless of how many games Roethlisberger plays.
• A WPXI-TV program “The Final Word” took an unscientific survey to find how many people agreed with the opinion of a New York Post columnist, who called Sidney Crosby a coach killer.
Forty-seven percent agreed. Must have been a lot people who moved into the area in the last three months.
John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.