The Pittsburgh Steelers secured a strong victory over the Cleveland Browns on Sunday. Pittsburgh beat its divisional rival by a score of 27-14, and the win was very important as the Steelers have a gauntlet coming up on their schedule. The Steelers have one of the hardest schedules in the NFL during the last four weeks of the season, and it will be a good way to measure just how good the team actually is. The Steelers grew their lead in the AFC North with the win over Cleveland, but the standings can still change a lot depending on how the Steelers play throughout the rest of the season.
Over the next three weeks of the 2024 season, the Steelers will be taking on three of the league's best teams within a span of 11 days. The Steelers will travel to play the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 15, and they will then play the Baltimore Ravens on the road, and then finish the three-game stretch up by hosting the Kansas City Chiefs on Christmas Day. It is a pretty tall task to play those three teams in such a short span of time, and DeShon Elliott was asked about the upcoming games during his postgame press conference.
"Shoot, we got to line up and play." Elliott said. "It's just going to show us how good we can be. There's no excuses obviously, the league makes the schedule, can't do anything about it. Depending on the flags that happened today I feel like the league hates us already man, so it's alright. We're going to go out here, play those games, work our butts off, and hopefully go 3-0."
Playing the Eagles, Ravens, and Chiefs in any stretch of time is difficult. However those three games being grouped together and put within a time frame of just 11 days seems like something the NFL could have avoided. There were some theories that the NFL did this on purpose since the Steelers are currently being featured on HBO's Hark Knocks, which certainly could be a possibility as the stretch of games should make for good content.
Elliott clearly didn't like some of the calls from the officiating crew on Sunday. There was one questionable roughing the passer penalty against the Steelers defense, and Elliott gave up a touchdown to David Njoku that seemed like it could have been offensive pass interference. There were some calls that didn't go Pittsburgh's way, and Elliott made sure to point that out even though the initial question had nothing to do with the officiating.
The safety has been a great pickup for the Steelers, and he should probably prepare to get some mail from the league office regarding his comments.
Steelers' DeShon Elliott Continues To Play Like One Of The Best Safeties In The League
Elliott has been an underrated addition for the Steelers. He is an elite tackler, and he led the defense in tackles once again on Sunday against the Browns. The safety had stints on other teams, but he never played quite as well as he is with Pittsburgh. He has a strong chance to be considered for the Pro-Bowl, or possibly even an All-Pro selection.