The Steelers prove they don’t belong on the same field as the Chiefs

The Steelers aren’t in the same class as the Chiefs, and they proved it quite thoroughly in 36-10 loss at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday.

I thought the biggest upset on Sunday happened when the Texans, those lowly Texans, defeated the upstart Chargers in Houston during the 1 p.m. slate of games.

I was wrong.

I think the biggest upset was the fact that the Steelers, who briefly moved into the seventh seed in the AFC playoff race thanks to Los Angeles’ loss, somehow tallied 303 yards of total offense in a 36-10 blowout loss at the hands of the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium during the 4 p.m. slate of Week 16 games.

You talk about an upset. I mean, if you watched Sunday’s poor excuse for a performance, did it seem like Pittsburgh’s offense, one that failed to score a first-half touchdown for the fifth-straight game, accrued that many yards?

Garbage time is a helluva drug.

Kansas City came into the day as a 10-plus point favorite, a point-spread that quickly seemed too generous, considering how thorough the two-time defending AFC Champions were in their domination of this AFC pretender.

That’s what the Steelers are, ya’ know? They’re pretenders. How they managed to head into Week 16 with a winning record is one of the biggest mysteries of 2021 behind Bigfoot and the Loch ness monster.

Unfortunately for all Steelers fans with eyes, there are no fuzzy images when trying to identify this offense. It’s a clear and pathetic picture.

Matt Canada’s unit was rather impotent a week earlier in a 19-13 win over the Titans at Heinz Field. How in the world did that happen, by the way? The offense only posted 168 total yards in that game, a number that surely would have been matched on Sunday if not for the gift of garbage time.

As for the defense? I know we like to give a pass to that side of the ball in Steeler Nation, but let’s be real, it wasn’t much better. The difference between Sunday in Kansas City and a week earlier at Heinz Field when it bent all afternoon vs. the Titans offense was a lack of splash plays and takeaways. As for T.J. Watt? He wasn’t visible unless you count all of the times they showed him standing on the sidelines while dealing with his various ailments. Nobody else stepped up to fill that vacuum, not even defensive lineman Cam Heyward, whose most notable play occurred early in the game when he jumped offsides on third and 11.

The Steelers trailed by 33 points late in the contest, a margin of futility that was only surpassed by the 38 points the team trailed the Bengals by late in a game on Thanksgiving Weekend. If you throw in the 17-point deficit to the Chargers a week before that and the 29-0 deficit Pittsburgh found itself in just days after defeating the Ravens, well, the 2021 Steelers look like a team that’s just praying for the end of the regular season—and not the beginning of the postseason.

The 2021 Pittsburgh Steelers are a pathetic football team, and they seem about as alive for the playoffs as Terry Kiser’s character was in Weekend at Bernie’s.

But, believe it or not, the Steelers still have postseason—and even AFC North champion—hopes with two games left to go in the 2021 regular season.

But do they even have a pulse at this point? That’s a damn good question.