Before returning our attention to the game at hand, I wanted to quickly point out that the Steelers have an incredibly favorable schedule to start the season:
Week 1: @ Cleveland
Week 2: vs. Buffalo
Week 3: vs. San Francisco
:Week 4: @ Arizona
Week 5: vs. Seattle
Week 6: BYE
It most definitely gets tougher from there - we travel to Denver and Cincy the following two weeks. We should however have a solid record and some confidence heading into those two games.
Of course, nothing is given in this league - we did lose to the fu*%ing Oakland Raiders last year - but I don't expect a repeat performance in 2007. We're not unbelievably dominant on either side of the ball, but we're a fairly balanced team that should win a healthy number of football games if we stay relatively injury-free and protect the football better than last year.
Obviously road games are tough in this league, but going to Cleveland and Arizona isn't overly daunting. The Bills might scare me if we were playing in BUF in December, but not so much at Heinz. Same with Seattle. Is a 5-0 start unrealistic? I don't think so at all. In my mind, anything less than 4-1 would be disappointing and would leave us with an uphill battle for the rest of the season.
Coaches talk one game at a time and refuse to acknowledge that who they're playing makes a difference - yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Your schedule matters in the NFL. Look at the Jets last year. They weren't one of the 6 best teams in the AFC last year, but they finished their season with games against Houston, Green Bay, Buffalo, Minnesota, Miami, and Oakland.