Tim Benz: How Cam Newton going to the Patriots will impact … the Steelers? - TribLIVE

About an hour ago

It used to be that this time of year Steelers fans would be focusing on two things.

1. How can we talk ourselves into believing the Steelers are going to be better than the year before?

And

2. How can we talk ourselves into thinking the Patriots are going to be worse than the year before?

This year, that should be easier than ever. After all, the Steelers are getting Ben Roethlisberger back at quarterback. And the Patriots lost Tom Brady at quarterback.

No, Pittsburgh’s Patriots paranoia isn’t as much fun as it used to be. Pittsburgh football fans are just trying to figure out how their team is going to make the playoffs again for the first time since 2018.

Meanwhile, the Patriots may have to worry about making the playoffs as a wild card for the first time since 2008. That’s when Brady was lost for the year during the season opener, and the Patriots missed out on the postseason with an 11-5 record. The franchise has won the AFC East every year since then.

It certainly won’t take 11 wins to make the AFC playoff bracket in 2020. With a seventh team being added, I’d be stunned if the last team needs more than nine wins. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the last club to qualify was 8-8 or 9-7.

The Patriots certainly have a better chance of hitting those marks — or better — with newly signed quarterback Cam Newton as Brady’s replacement instead of unproven second-year newbie Jarrett Stidham, or journeyman Brian Hoyer.

So, while Steelers fans channel their eyes towards the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs as the teams to track down in the AFC, that shouldn’t derail them from holding onto some good ol’ fashioned New England angst.

After all, the win-total dip the Patriots may experience in 2020 could bring them right into the same area of the AFC standings as where the Steelers should wind up. In the past for the Steelers and Patriots, that’s been battling for home field advantage in the playoffs.

Now it may be for being one of the last teams into them. Or, potentially as first-round opponents. Whereas prior to Newton’s arrival, I was anticipating the Patriots being on the outside of the cutline.

Let’s map out this conversation.

Betonline.ag and FoxBet.com both have the Chiefs as the favorites to win the Super Bowl, with Baltimore a close second. Both are heavy favorites to win their divisions, too.

For our purposes, we’re going to pencil those two teams in as the first and second seeds in the AFC playoff tree, with the top seed getting the bye.

Sorry Steelers fans. I agree that Baltimore may not go 14-2 again. But I don’t think they’ll fall back far enough for the Black and Gold to catch them atop the AFC North.

From there, the AFC is a jumbled mess. FoxBet sets every over/under win total at 8.5 or lower for all four teams in the AFC South. That’s probably not far off. I’ll throw a few bucks on the South winner being no better than 10-6. Probably 9-7.

That leaves the AFC East and the wild-card teams, where we’ll probably find the Patriots and Steelers lobbying for position. FoxBet has both teams at over/under 9.5 wins.

For the Steelers, that one is pretty much on the nose to me as well. I’ve been calling them a 10-6 team for months now, and I’m standing by it. I’ve looked at the Buffalo Bills as winning the East at 11-5. Now with Newton in the mix, I think it’s a toss-up between those two clubs at 10-6, likely getting the third seed in the conference.

Why not? Did you think without Brady that the Patriots would plummet all the way down to a five-win team? Probably not.

Is a potentially healthy — emphasis on potentially — Newton worth three or four more victories than Stidham or Hoyer? I’d say so.

If that’s the case, that gets New England right into that 9.5 over/under total and AFC East contention. If not, how about jockeying with the Steelers for the first or second wild-card slot?

Not too nutty, is it?

I can easily picture a 10-win Steelers team getting the top wild card. Meanwhile, the Patriots win the East at 10-6 but lose out on a tiebreak to the Titans winning the South at 10-6. So Tennessee is the third seed and the Patriots are fourth.

See you in Massachusetts for Round 1 of the playoffs!

Or a mystery wild-card team pops up to 10 or 11 wins and bumps both the Pats and Steelers down a rung. Now maybe New England and Pittsburgh are vying for seeding to avoid a trip to K.C. or Baltimore in the first round.

This is all way too presumptive. A far too nuanced way of saying that few things in the AFC are known beyond the fact that the Chiefs and Ravens are really good.

Two other things you could probably bank on, though, are that the Steelers will be a few games better, and the Patriots will be a few games worse.

With (a healthy) Newton taking snaps instead of Stidham or Hoyer that margin gets a lot narrower in New England. And it probably aligns the Steelers and Patriots in mutual company once more.

Just not in the same lofty real estate atop the conference they mutually held so often over the past 20 years.

Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via Twitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.

Categories: Sports | Steelers/NFL | Breakfast With Benz