If you’ve come to this website pre-Week 1 before and saw Bill Barnwell’s name, odds are, he wasn’t saying anything positive about the Pittsburgh Steelers. It became a running joke that Barnwell would have the Steelers in his offseason exercise of teams expected to regress, but in 2025, he thinks the Steelers could be a playoff team. In his playoff predictions, Barnwell predicted Pittsburgh to make the playoffs as a wild-card team.
While he’s not confident about the selection, Barnwell believes that the Steelers’ 2024 performance is “more sustainable” than some of their past season playoff appearances, specifically citing the Steelers winning the turnover battle in 12 of their 17 games.