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bye with a record of 3-2-1 Youth Bud Dupree Jersey , giving them a .583 winning percentage. Currently in third place in the AFC North, the Steelers are on a two game winning streak. While they’re home record is a mere 1-2, the Steelers have made up for their early woes at Heinz Field as they are yet to lose on the road with a mark of 2-0-1. Looking at how the Steelers have performed going into their bye week in years past, and how they finished each season, gives both reason for hope and concern. To be consistent, we will look at Steelers’ games before the bye going back to the 2002 season. The reason this season was chosen was because it is the first year the AFC North was established, as well as there being difficult data from 2001 (the Steelers only played one game before their Week 3 bye because the games from Week 2 were moved to the end of the season due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks).Although Steelers Nation is spoiled to where a successful season is measured in terms of winning a Super Bowl, the Steelers cannot get to the Super Bowl without first making the playoffs. Therefore, we will use the standard of a playoff appearance as the baseline for the team reaching the desired goal for the regular season.Winning Percentage (.583)Since 2002, the Steelers have entered the bye with a record of .500 or greater 12 times. In those seasons, the Steelers have made the playoffs 11 out of the 12 occasions. The lone exception was in 2009 when the Steelers entered their Week 8 bye with a record of 5-2 and on a four-game winning streak. The Steelers finished 9–7 for the season and finished third in the AFC North while missing the playoffs.Winning Streak (2)One reason Steelers fans feel the team is heading in the right direction as they enter the bye is due to winning the last two contests. The Steelers have had a win streak of two games or more going into the bye week five times since 2002. If those five times, Steelers have made the playoffs four of them. Once again, the only exception was in 2009. Additionally, with the exception of 2009, the Steelers have made the playoffs every year since 2002 where they won even just a single game as their final contest before the bye.Home (1-2) and Away (2-0-1)Before heading in a bad direction, the numbers show one last peak before crashing down. The peak in this case is the Steelers record away from Heinz Field. Even though there was the tie in Cleveland, the Steelers have not lost on the road in 2018. Other than this year, the Steelers have achieved this only twice since the creation of the AFC North. The Steelers were 2-0 on the road before the bye in 2010 and 1-0 on the road in 2005. Do those two years in Steeler history sound familiar? In both seasons, the Steelers reached the Super Bowl.Before booking a hotel for Atlanta in February, it is now time to look at the gloomy side of the numbers for 2018. With a home record below .500 before the bye, the Steelers have only managed this three other times, with two occasions where the team did not make the playoffs. The only case where the Steelers had a sub-.500 home record and still made the playoffs was in 2002. In this particular season, the Steelers’ bye week was during Week 3. The Steelers had only hosted one game at Heinz Field where they were defeated by the eventual AFC-champion Oakland Raiders. With only a two-game sample before the bye, it is very difficult to draw conclusions from this particular season.AFC North Standings (Third)The Steelers enter the bye in 2018 with their worst standing in the AFC North since there 0-4 start in 2013. The good news is the Steelers have never finished worse for the season in the AFC North standings than what they were entering the bye, with the lone exception being the aforementioned 2009 season. The bad news is the Steelers have never made the playoffs if they entered the bye in either third or fourth place in the division. But there is something to remember: since the Steelers are only a half came out of the division lead, they could move as high as first place in the without even playing this weekend.Hope in Numbers If you are our numbers geek like me, you can be either encouraged or discouraged by where the Steelers currently stand. The winning percentage Cheap Antonio Brown Jersey , win streak, and road record are all reasons to believe that the Steelers will make the postseason in 2018. But home record and current division standings are items of concern. Much like the Steelers play in the early part of the season, the numbers give quite an inconsistent result. Personally, I think it’s a good thing because I will have to intently watch the games since the numbers aren’t telling me if the Steelers are definitely going to win or lose.In other words, these particular numbers can give a sense of comfort or grief, but not future results.We are responsible for the current Antonio Brown fiasco You’re a Bengals fan. Your team is 2-0. Your quarterback, since changing offensive coordinators midway through the 2017 season, is playing like an All-Pro. Your offense is young and dynamic; the defense is cohesive, formidable, and, critically, getting its second-best player back next week. Elsewhere, your foremost rivals are imploding, plagued by injuries, ineffectiveness, and external strife. The Pittsburgh Steelers have become the NFL’s biggest spectacle, thanks in no small part to all the attention being paid to Antonio Brown’s “antics” (or insert whatever terminology you find most palatable). In a loss to Kansas City last Sunday, Brown was seen venting to offensive coordinator Larry Fichtner and receivers coach Darryl Drake over...who knows. Targets? Usage? Ben missing throws? It’s currently not clear. Either way, he skipped the following day’s walk-through, apparently so he could fire off zingers at former public relations stooges on Twitter and fuel rampant speculation about his future with the team. It sure worked! What’s evident is that whatever version of Antonio Brown we’re seeing now is not the same amiable, fun-loving Antonio Brown from two or three years ago. He seems angry. Stressed out. Preoccupied. The intensity that imbued his workouts and game performances has reached the sidelines and his social media accounts. He disdains the traditional media. And he should—they’re what’s caused this mess. I realize that blaming the media for, uhh, everything is very 2018 (an the irony of complaining about the media is not lost on me given that, when I click the publish button, I technically become “media”), but, in this case Authentic Artie Burns Jersey , I think it’s a fair appraisal. Though Pittsburgh is by definition a small market compared to, say, New York City, the rigor with which the local media covers the Steelers is tantamount to the coverage the New York media affords the Jets or Giants. In fact, I’d argue that athletes in Pittsburgh—especially ones who play for the Steelers—are under an even more discerning microscope than athletes in New York because:A) there are fewer teams (duh)B) there are fewer good teams (apologies to the Pirates, Pitt basketball, and Pitt football)C) the fanbase, in general, is more ferventHere is Antonio Brown, the face of what is by far the biggest draw in the city. Here is Antonio Brown, an unheralded draft afterthought who the Steelers thought could be a decent kick returner down the line, emerging as one of the NFL’s topmost superstars by way of his merciless, chip-on-the-shoulder work ethic. Here is Antonio Brown, a player with a spotless off-field track record, donating $100,000 to the local children’s hospital. Here is Antonio Brown, posing for selfies with fans pregame, becoming an all-time fan-favorite. Now, here is Antonio Brown showing up late to a scheduled appearance at that same hospital. Here is Antonio Brown throwing a water cooler in disgust. Here is Antonio Brown yucking it up on Facebook Live in advance of the AFC Championship Game, a game in which his Steelers were blown out by the Patriots. Here is Antonio Brown getting testy with the media. Here he is calling the most distinguished football writer in the city “a clown.” You get the point; the guy can’t even let out a fart without some smarmy media type tsk-tsking him in a radio segment or newspaper article for not saying “excuse me.” In my estimation, though, the singular moment that precipitated the...let’s call it the degradation of Brown’s public persona...was his “holdout” before the 2016 season. If you recall, with two years remaining on what was at the time a ridiculously cheap contract, one that certainly was not befitting of Brown’s skillset or production, Brown “held out” of voluntary organized team activities (whether he actually did this over his contract is debatable), which is when some folks got a little comfortable throwing the word “diva” around. Brown eventually returned, the Steelers fronted him some additional cash http://www.pittsburghsteelersteamstore.com/joe-haden-jersey , and things were just peachy from then on; but, in retrospect, that strikes me as a particularly momentous occurrence. Any “contentious” events that followed, ranging from the Facebook Live fiasco to the ongoing proceedings, drew the ire of the fanbase, who accused Brown of being spoiled. Here is a scathing expose that appeared in The Undefeated, seemingly out of nowhere, in which Jesse Washington rebukes Brown and accuses his “Call God” act as being a front. Imagine already harboring some kind of baseline disdain for Antonio Brown and reading that, or a story about Brown showing up late to visit a bunch of sick kids, or a story about him bringing a helicopter to training camp. It’s gonna reinforce any inherent negativity or, at the very least, rub you the wrong way. Now, I want to make it clear I’m that not blaming the media for treating Brown “unfairly” and I’m certainly not condemning Steelers fans who are irked by whatever it is that’s going on with Brown (and, for that matter, the rest of the team). The media is responsible for reporting the facts and writing interesting things, and Antonio Brown is an overflowing font of evergreen content. On Tuesday, he was one of the most talked-about things on Twitter; there was controversy surrounding a Supreme Court nominee, there was an alleged former “associate” of the president discussing characters from Mario Bros., and there was Antonio Brown. Anything Brown does is going to be newsworthy, so it would actually be a disservice to their readerships for local publications to ignore exciting stories that drive conversations and generate clicks. Steelers fans, particularly older Steelers fans, luxuriate in decorum. You score, you hand the ball to the official, and you head to the bench. I rip on the old-timers a lot, but it’s understandable to expect your favorite team to behave a certain way, a way that you’re used to seeing and in a way that reflects some of the, erm Authentic Chris Boswell Jersey , traditional norms and values of the franchise: hard-working, selfless, classy, whatever.The thinking here is that individuals’ personalities are secondary to the success of the team, and if any individual is not all-in on promoting this success, they aren’t worth keeping around.And Brown, despite his ubiquitous online presence, is usually very reserved when there’s a camera in his face, which is exactly why his mini-tirade back in July about the media caught everyone off-guard. (The exception here is the “What It Is” videos, wherein Brown is decidedly more in-his-element). He gets nervous during interviews, often repeating boilerplate football player lingo (“Trying to do what’s needed to win” “Gotta give credit to the guys up front” etc.) or stumbling on his words. Thus, while I do think that superstar athletes maybe should develop a thicker skin and learn to welcome the attention that comes along with being a professional athlete, perhaps Brown is just an innately sensitive person (which is absolutely fine, by the way) and the frequent media coverage (which include everything from critical blog posts to straight hit-pieces) and backlash from the fan base has started to take its toll on him. Overall, I think this is a bad situation all around, and its one I think has been exacerbated by each party’s failure to empathize with the other. Brown needs to understand that the media have responsibilities to uphold, and that sometimes fans are going to have negative perceptions of his actions; the fans—you and me—need to understand that Antonio Brown is a human person, one with human emotions and human problems, and that his current indignation towards everything is most likely the result of compounding and overwhelming negative attention (attention that, in fairness, he may have invited, but maybe more attention than he intended). With any luck, we’ll all be on our way to moving forward soon enough. Custom Los Angeles Rams Jerseys