Coach, outside the facility and your conversations with family, friends, casual conversations about football, what are they feeding you in terms of what they're most excited about with these two?

They know better than to feed me anything because I do not care.

That's classic Mike Tomman. He's in full football mode. He does not care whether you're excited, he does not care whether you're not excited.

He doesn't care whether you watch the game, he doesn't care whether you don't watch the game. He's focused on getting his team to be as good as it can be to turn that some of the parts into something greater than what they would individually be.

That's what he does, no losing season ever.

Last year's accomplishment when they started as slowly as they did, amazing this year. They have that vibe.

There's just that weird that is we're going to talk power rankings later where I put them the comment I made was a month ago it would have seemed high.

Now it seems a little low. Everybody's waking up to the fact that these are still the Steelers and there's something to be said for having a winning tradition.

There's something to be said for having great players. There's something to be said for having great coaching.

We get so caught up in all the other bells and whistles and bright shiny objects in the AFC. The Steelers are just just the model of consistency in the NFL for the past 50 years.

Nothing more than that year in and year out relevance year in and year out contention very rarely do the wheels come off, which means you're always in the mix for something to go your way and fall just right and get to the playoffs and make something happen.

I know they haven't want to play off game in several years now. They haven't been to a Super Bowl since 45, but they're always relevant even when you think they're not going to be in this year.

We don't know, but I think more people are starting to realize they got some pretty good players. They can hold their own in the AFC North and in the rest of the conference.

Definitely, you know, the thing there is relevant is not what they want, right? I mean, they're not. They're the Pittsburgh Steelers. They're six times Super Bowl champions.

They expect to win a playoff game, you know, every few years, if not every year. Now, yeah, they got to the playoffs a few times where you go, I don't know if that team deserves to be there, but knowing Mike Tomlin, right?

And the phrase he always says, like I've heard him say it to me personally and other people like he's got to walk by those six trophies every day when he walks into his office and he feels the pressure of that.

And that's the standard. He's not. He's not happy. You know this, too, with just being relevant, right? They seem like they're a team on the mission. They won the preseason, in my opinion.

I mean, we sat here and kind of gushed about them each week, offensively and defensively. They looked the best. Now it's preseason. I get that, but there's a lot of times where you can look at preseason, go, ah, it's preseason and then you look back eight weeks later and you go, man, why didn't I listen to preseason? They were showing all the signs of a good football team.

And here they are six and two or whatever. I think they're going to surprise some people. There's no doubt we talked about it yesterday. I had left the bills out of the playoffs because I put the Pittsburgh Steelers in there.

And, and that's what I feel about that culture. And like you said, that team, I think is a little more talented than even I gave a credit for in the spring. And they fixed that O line to a degree and they just seem to have a mojo and a determination about them right now that you can feel.

The season gets started with a bang for the Pittsburgh Steelers, a Super Bowl matchup that never quite happened, but felt like maybe it should have at some point 49ers against the Steelers, San Francisco coming to Pittsburgh, potentially likely, whatever, without Nick Bosa, the reigning defensive player of the year.

Here's Tom from yesterday talking about the status uncertain status of Bosa for Sunday.

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