(Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

In their next three games, the Steelers will face off against two teams that are yet to lose this year and another team that has already beaten them once.  

This is effectively the murderer’s row portion of the schedule, something that would have been impossible to predict at the beginning of the year when the Tennessee Titans game looked like one of the most ominous on the schedule.

And this comes before they’ve even played their first game against the Baltimore Ravens.

The Steelers just finished up a somewhat impressive three game winning streak against the junior varsity portion of their schedule.  They effectively beat a badly coached average team and two dregs of the league. 

But, considering all three of those games were effectively must –win games, that is still no small achievement, not in a league in which anyone can beat anyone on any given Sunday. 

Unless you are talking about the New Orleans Saints who look near unbeatable, or the St. Louis Rams who I’m not sure could beat my old high school junior varsity team. 

Come to think of it, I’m not so sure the old adage that anyone can beat anyone on any given Sunday holds much water.  With that in mind, that three game winning streak probably didn’t tell us much, at least not in the overall scheme of how the Steelers compare to the rest of the league at this point.

This is the make it or break it portion of the schedule.  If they win their next two games, they are well on their way to another terrific season.  If they lose them both, we can start obsessing about the draft a bit early while writing plenty of “what went wrong” post-mortem articles. 

They still would have time to recover and make the playoffs.  But, considering how good some of their AFC rivals are looking, it is hard to see a scenario where they can recover from that. 

So, what should we expect over the next three games? 

For what it’s worth, my guess is that the Steelers will go 2-1, beating the Favreings and Bengals and dropping to the Broncos.  There isn’t much science applied to that.  It is just a hunch.

Minnesota is the best of the three teams during that stretch with a balanced and very dangerous offense ably backed up by a very good defense anchored by the best defensive line in football. 

But, the Steelers are chomping at the bit for this game, looking for a chance to prove that they are for real after beating up on twenty pound weaklings for the last couple weeks.

With the collapse of Tennessee, the only noteworthy win the Steelers have recorded so far this year was against a questionable and inconsistent San Diego team.   

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