Steelers4Life
Footballguy
First off, I don't question their strength of schedule. They can only beat who's on their schedule. I'm more concerned with HOW they played against the teams they beat and where they beat them.When I look at their home regular season schedule, I see blowout wins over Houston, San Francisco, Arizona, St. Louis, and Indianapolis' backups. That's great, and that's what they should be able to do. Against the only 3 good teams they played at home (Atlanta, Dallas, NY Giants, and none of them were really that good), they won by only 3 each time, but a win is a win. In the playoffs, it was an impressive win over the Redskins after they lost Alexander, and they beat up Carolina. Of course, Carolina has no 2nd WR and was down to their 4th string RB. However, on the road they seemed to struggle even with teams they should soundly beat. 1. They got beat by 12 against the Jaguars, a team the Steelers took to OT even with Maddox turning the ball over 4 times.2. They lost to the Redskins on the road. 3. They beat the Rams by 6 in a game that was close throughout.4. They were only up by 7 at Arizona until a late TD sealed the game.5. They were up relatively big at San Francisco, but allowed the 49ers to come back and only lose by 2.6. They needed a late TD to win by 4 at Tennessee.7. They had an impressive 42 point win in Philly, but the Eagles were without McNabb and TO, and they didn't seem to care much.8. And they lost, albeit with backups, at Green Bay.I'm wondering why. I've asked a couple times in other threads, and the only response I got was one person saying jet lag may have been part of it.Does their gameplan change on the road? Does the defense depend that much on the "12 man?" Do they just execute much better at home?