Espn.com’s weekly ranking of every team in the NFL is a useless, meaningless, and otherwise unimportant event over the course of an NFL season. After all, rare is the time when the first-ranked team truly is the undisputed best in the league. But since week 4, the top spot in those power rankings has belonged to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Even without Ben Roethlisberger, even without winning a decidedly winnable game against the Ravens, even without a true passing attack in what has become a passing league, the Steelers climbed to the summit of ESPN’s list and have stayed there.
For fans within Pittsburgh, this honor may come as a surprise. Why? The Steelers are rarely a highly-ranked team, even during their periods of greatness, which may be because of their status as a small-market team. A look back at the ESPN ranking history shows a steady diet of mediocre rankings, even during the Super Bowl seasons in 2005 and 2008. An exception to this is the 2004 season when, under a then-rookie Ben Roethlisberger, the team finished an astonishing 15-1 before flaming out in the playoffs. For that season, the Steelers were ranked #1 for most of that 14-game winning streak.
“For how well they have played so far, they really deserve to be number-one now, and when they were number-one in the past it’s not like they fell apart,” added sophomore Kurt de Fiebre.
This season’s climb to the top has been made all the more unlikely due to the surprising success of the Jets, who enter their bye week with the NFL’s best record at 5-1. The large market-size of New York helps to make that team more visible than the Steelers, which would often lead to their being ranked higher, and, in fact, senior ESPN NFL analyst John Clayton still holds that the team is inferior to the Jets, who have a higher-rated defense and a potentially devastating offense just beginning to hit its stride.
Fortunately for Jets and Steelers fans alike, the two teams will square off to determine NFL supremacy when they meet in Pittsburgh on Sunday, December 19th. If both teams win out until that date, expect a vicious fight for control of not only the league, but the ESPN power rankings, too.