Are the Steelers being disrespected nationally?

Welcome back to another edition of Read & React!

With training camp set to begin at the end of this month, we’ve nearly made it through the quiet portion of the NFL calendar. Soon, your feeds will be stuffed with the usual summer fare: stories on players who arrived at camp in the best shape of their lives, reports on who is “holding in” for a better contract, speculation on which veterans might be surprise cuts, and the unfortunate practice injuries that could flip the NFL season on its head. We’ll dive into all of that in our next column when we preview training camp — so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Today, however, we are still tasked with finding Steelers topics to discuss while we wait for real football to begin. Now that the national media is starting to amp up for the NFL season, we’ll dive in on whether the expectations for the Steelers have reached a new low, Ryland will give a Redman Award primer, and Ryan will weigh in on whether improvement from the offense or defense is more vital to the Steelers advancing farther this season.

Let’s dive in!

Has the lack of Steelers hype gone too far?

RP: I don’t know how else Steelers fans should view national “coverage” on the team as anything other than disrespect at this point. Truthfully, I don’t put a lot of stock in Power Rankings because they are incredibly arbitrary, and no one grades on the same criteria. While they are typically fun conversation pieces — people like lists, it’s how our brains work — they are rarely predictive. Honestly, how many outlets predicted the Seahawks and Patriots would be good teams last year, let alone the final two teams playing?

So while I’m not particularly pressed by what specific number gets assigned to the Steelers in these rankings, I do believe it’s emblematic of a more annoying trend: it’s been a long time since the big players in NFL media have known how to talk about the Steelers.

To a certain extent, I get some of the misgivings and lack of in-depth analysis on the Steelers. The team hasn’t won a playoff game since January of 2017. The NFL is a quarterback-driven league, and the Steelers have had a revolving door under center since Ben Roethlisberger retired. Mike Tomlin’s non-losing seasons streak was both a monolith and a cliché, something an analyst could shrug and point to so the conversation could quickly move on to a media darling like the Ravens, Bills, Rams or Cowboys.

But therein lies my problem with recent coverage of our Steelers by “big media.” It’d be one thing if they laid out a well-thought-out argument against the team, and actually addressed the many changes the team undergoes in an offseason, especially this current one. But too often analysis of the Steelers is presented as an afterthought. Something barely worth acknowledging, with zero brainpower applied and no actual analysis taking place....