Can Steelers Follow Manning’s Giants Path to Super Bowl

by Bo Marchionte
@bomarchionte | College2Pro.com
Published January 7, 2025, 1:29 PM

I love numbers, and that love led me down a rabbit hole to playoff seeds, points for, points against. No Next Gen Stats, no AI-powered insight. Just numbers on paper that feel like a real barometer for whether a team belongs in the Super Bowl conversation.

And the numbers don’t exactly scream Steelers Super Bowl.

Seventeenth in scoring offense.

Fifteenth in scoring defense.

That’s league-average, meat-and-potatoes stuff. The kind of profile that usually gets you bounced in the first round while the talking heads tell you why it was obvious all along. In today’s NFL, we’re trained to believe contenders need to live in the top 10 of everything.

Efficiency. Explosiveness. Point differential. Instagram stats.

But history’s a little messier than that.

Because the last team to win a Super Bowl while living right in this statistical mud was the 2007 New York Giants. Fifteenth in points scored. Sixteenth in points allowed. Basically, the same neighborhood Pittsburgh’s parked in right now. Nobody feared them. Nobody circled them. They just kept showing up.

With cast of characters on this current roster in Pittsburgh, it definitely can create a vibrant pulse or maybe false identity of something special.

That run started with Eli Manning still carrying the “game manager” label going into Lambeau Field and beating Brett Favre in the cold. Aaron Rodgers was standing there on the sideline, holding a clipboard, years away from his own Hall of Fame résumé. That Giants team didn’t look special. Until suddenly, they were.

That’s the lane Pittsburgh’s in, whether anyone likes it or not.

This Steelers offense isn’t pretty. It sputters. It disappears for stretches. Then it clicks just long enough to get out of trouble. It’s not built to light teams up for 35. It’s built to not screw itself. When the run game works, things settle. When protection holds for a beat, they can find rhythm. It’s not explosive, but it’s functional and in January, functional can be enough if you don’t panic.

The defense is the same way.

Fifteenth in points allowed doesn’t tell the whole story. This isn’t a bend-don’t-break unit or a shutdown one. It’s a chaos defense. It waits. It pokes. It hunts for the one play that flips the game. Sack-fumbles. Tips. Bad decisions are forced under pressure.

That style will piss you off for three quarters. Then it wins you the game.

That’s exactly how the Giants did it.

They didn’t dominate offenses all season. They didn’t peak in October. Their pass rush came alive late. Games slowed down. Opponents pressed. Mistakes piled up. By the time they hit the Super Bowl, they weren’t the statistical team from September they were something scarier – A contender.

The Steelers just lived that script against Baltimore.

After that wild win that locked up the division and punched their playoff ticket, Mike Tomlin kept it simple:

“I’m thankful for that, excited about what lies ahead.”

That phrase matters what lies ahead. Not what they were. Not what the numbers say they should be. What’s next.

Because what lies ahead is real. And it’s not forgiving.

Tomlin’s also been blunt about the quarterback situation, especially when talking about Aaron Rodgers being the only starting AFC playoff quarterback with Super Bowl credentials. No mystery there. No hype either.

“But again, as I’ve said multiple times here recent weeks, this was the vision in the spring when we pursued him.”

That’s not chest-thumping. That’s ownership. This wasn’t an accident. This wasn’t desperation. This was the plan survive the season, stay in the fight, and see if experience still matters when the games get tight.

Now the attention turns to Houston, and Tomlin didn’t sugarcoat that either.

“Now, turning my attention toward Houston. Man, they’re a top-notch group. They need no endorsement from me. They’re winners of nine straight. When you win nine straight games, there is usually a mode of operation, and it certainly is. They’re a group that takes very good care of the football as a collective. I think they have ten turnovers on the season. That’s No. 1 in football. I think they’re No. 3 with 27 takeaways on defense.”

That’s the problem. Houston doesn’t beat itself. And the Steelers’ entire model depends on other teams blinking first.

So no, the numbers don’t say Pittsburgh should be here. They say average. Ordinary. Middle of the pack. But the 2007 Giants lived there too, right up until they didn’t. They didn’t dominate seasons. They dominated moments.

That’s the thin line Pittsburgh’s walking. No margin for error. No room for dumb turnovers. No special teams’ slip-ups. Health must hold. Timing must be perfect not in November, not in December, but right now.

It’s uncomfortable football. It always is. It’s the kind you complain about while you’re watching it and miss like hell when it’s gone.

The math says it shouldn’t happen again.

The math said that in 2007 too.

And sometimes the teams that scare you the most aren’t the ones blowing people out, they’re the ones that look average until January shows up and everything gets real.

Is Pittsburgh for real?

Where about to find out.

 

Photo Credit Frank Hyatt/College2Pro.com