A CHANGING OF THE GUARD IN AFC NORTH?
By STEVE KING
Everybody – and that includes me – is looking at the ascent of the Browns and the simultaneous descent of the Pittsburgh Steelers and what it might mean for this season.
That’s obvious.
Coming into focus is, of course, a possible shot at the AFC North title, as difficult to believe as that was only several weeks ago, when Pittsburgh was looking eye to eye with the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs for supremacy in the conference and Cleveland was looking merely to get into the playoffs, even if it’s as the last-seed wild card.
But what about the state of these two teams going forward if this ascent and descent continues into next season and beyond? That may be getting ahead of ourselves, but it’s sure interesting to ponder and that’s the lifeblood of sports. Is this – could this be — the changing of the guard at the top of the division, with Cleveland replacing Pittsburgh as the team to battle the Baltimore Ravens at the top of the division?
No one goes anywhere in the NFL – at least not for the long haul, for a group of seasons – without a stellar quarterback, and the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger is starting to show his age while the two young bucks, Baker Mayfield of the Browns and the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, are really showing out.
When the Steelers have had great quarterbacks, such as Roethlisberger and Terry Bradshaw, they have had, not surprisingly, great teams. But in all those years in between – a quarter-century, from about 1984 until 2004 when Roethlisberger arrived – the Steelers, not surprisingly again, were simply good, at best. Unless I – and other people, including all of you — are missing something, the next great Steelers quarterback is nowhere in sight. There is no one to whom Roethlisberger can hand over the controls at some point.
The Steelers are smart – they have an outstanding organization – but unless they figure it out, and quickly, then the stranglehold they’ve had on the North for most of the division’s two-decade existence, might be slipping away not just for 2020, but also for seasons to come. And the Browns – and Ravens – could be benefactors of all this.
