Dropsies

Santonio holmes dropped a touchdown pass and two other big passes that would have gone for first downs agains the Bears. Now the Steelers have dropped five spots in this ESPN Power Ranking... from First to Sixth.

Yikes!

Not that this loss was on Holmes, but to watch him drop passes and watch the Steelers drop in the rankings by this much both hurt my gut.

ESPN's power ranking, in my opinion, has been one of the most objective and dead-on rankings out there when it comes to the NFL. I'm actually surprised that we're still ahead of the Saints here, who undoubtedly would tear up our secondary if we had to play them next week.

On Sunday, we play the Bengals, ranked 24 out of 32, who upset the Greenbay Packers this past Sunday. If we lay an egg against this team and they catch us by surprise, I groan to think where we'll stand on the rankings.

I know. I know. These rankings are just a picture of where people think the 32 teams stack up against one another. Nobody is saying that the Ravens will win the Superbowl just because they've made the number one spot after two weeks. But this does speak to the Steelers' vulnerabilities. Besides the Ravens, the Giants, Colts, Falcons and Vikings are all ranked above us right now.

Even more painful, actually is to see where our Defense ranks, not based on opinion, but based on actual stats. Again, only two weeks have gone by, but right now the Steelers D is allowing an average of 297 yards per game and are ranked 11th overall.

Compare that with last year's 237 yards per game allowed after 16 games...

That tells you something.