The saying “any given Sunday” is well known around the NFL. It’s basic meaning is that any given Sunday any team can beat any other team and for the most part it is true. Every year in the NFL there are good teams and bad teams, but the one thing that people fail to remember at times is that every player in the NFL is a pro-football player and was a stand-out player in college.
Through the history of NFL football there have only been two teams that have ever lost every game during the regular season. The reason that the worst teams in the league still win games (almost) every year is because sometimes the ball just bounces the right way in a game and because every team is made up of players that are good enough to win football games.
In 2012 the Steelers were expected to compete for their division and be a possible Super Bowl contender. However, five weeks into the season the Steelers had a 2-3 record and had lost to the Oakland Raiders and the Tennessee Titans. Both the Titans and Raiders will be picking the top eight picks of the 2013 NFL Draft because of how poorly the rest of their 2012 seasons went, but both teams came out on top of the Steelers.
The sixth pick in the 2013 NFL Draft is held by the Cleveland Browns who also got a win against the Steelers in 2012. Now the Steelers did turn the ball over eight times in the game so it would be fair to say they lost the game more so than the Browns won it, but again any given Sunday anything can happen in the NFL.
Kansas City will be picking first in the 2013 NFL Draft and they took the Steelers to overtime in week 10 of the 2012 season. The Chiefs only won two games all year long. They lost fourteen games during the 2012 season and they lost those games by an average of 16.5 points per game, but the Steelers needed overtime to beat them.
The Steelers also lost to the San Diego Chargers and Dallas Cowboys both of whom missed the playoffs. In fact, outside of the Baltimore Ravens, who the Steelers split their season series with 1-1, the only team with a winning record that beat the Steelers in 2012 was the Denver Broncos in week 1.
Now where it gets even more confusing is when discussing the Baltimore Ravens playoff run. The Ravens lost four of their last five games and were the exact opposite of what everyone keeps talking about when it comes to making playoff runs. During both of the New York Giants recent Super Bowl runs they were the hot team in the NFL, but the Ravens were the least hot team in the entire NFL heading into the playoffs.
One of those four losses suffered by the Ravens came at the hand of the Steelers. That game ended 23-20 and Joe Flacco was out-played by 38 year-old third string quarterback Charlie Batch. So how does a team that lost four of five including a game where they went up against a third string quarterback make a three game playoff run and reach the Super Bowl? Because in the NFL the saying “any given Sunday” is around for a reason.
In 2012 the Steelers lost six games to teams that finished with non-winning records, but they beat the Super Bowl Champion Ravens with their third string quarterback. If that isn’t the definition of “any given Sunday” then I guess I just don’t know what is, but it is something for Batch to hang his hat on because he will always know that he outplayed the best team in the league in 2012.
