Pittsburgh has been here before. The national media picks them to stumble, they win nine or ten games anyway, and everyone acts surprised. But this year feels different to the people who cover the team day in and day out. And not in a good way.
With Aaron Rodgers set to retire after the 2026 season, the Steelers have one shot at a Super Bowl run with a first-ballot Hall of Famer under center. Yet the national conversation around Pittsburgh has been mostly quiet, and when they do get mentioned, it’s often in the context of why they won’t matter. Two writers who follow the team closely, Ryan Parish and Ryland Bickley of Steelers Wire, recently laid out the case that the franchise is being treated unfairly.
“I don’t know how else Steelers fans should view national ‘coverage’ on the team as anything other than disrespect at this point,” Parish wrote.
The numbers back up the frustration. Multiple offseason power rankings have the Steelers sitting well behind the Bengals, a team that hasn’t won the AFC North since 2022 but gets a massive bump from Joe Burrow’s star power. Cincinnati’s ranking is built on the idea that Burrow alone makes them a contender. That’s fair. But Pittsburgh won the division in 2025, added Rodgers in the offseason, and still finds itself slotted behind teams that finished behind them a year ago.
Parish and Bickley pointed to that discrepancy. The Bengals are getting the benefit of the doubt off a non-winning season. The Steelers, coming off a division title, are getting treated like they overachieved and are due for a correction.
Bickley also raised the coaching change as a wild card. Mike Tomlin is out after 18 seasons of never posting a losing record. In comes Mike McCarthy, a safe hire, but a hire that represents a shift from the stability Pittsburgh had for nearly two decades.
“To be fair, the national media’s perception of the Steelers definitely entered disrespectful territory at times during the Mike Tomlin era, when it seemed like every year there were some big-name pundits who projected Pittsburgh to fall below .500 despite Tomlin winning seasons being as certain as death and taxes,” Bickley added. “But with a new coaching staff – and yes, I recognize Mike McCarthy was the safest floor option of Pittsburgh’s candidates – it’s not unreasonable to think that there might be more variance in this season’s results.”
That last part is the problem. The national media sees the coaching change as a reason to expect instability. The local coverage sees a team that earned the right to be taken seriously.
The Steelers haven’t won a playoff game since the 2016 season. That drought is real and it lingers. But Rodgers has a habit of making people look foolish for counting him out. If Pittsburgh gets rolling in the fall, the same outlets writing them off right now will pivot to talking about how they saw it coming all along.
The 2026 season is a deadline for the whole organization. Rodgers wants to walk away with another ring. The front office wants to prove the post-Roethlisberger rebuild was shorter than anyone predicted. And the fanbase wants to stop hearing that they’re stuck in the middle.
Games start in September. That’s when the noise quiets down or gets louder.
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