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Steelers nose tackle Casey Hampton told Ed Bouchette of the Post-Gazette, "Who we lose to doesn't matter. We beat good teams. It doesn't matter. We can't lose games at home, period. That's embarrassing and we can't do that."
The one guarantee the Steelers are providing amid their up-and-down 2012 season is they cannot lose at home in Week 15.
Pittsburgh travels to Dallas to take on the 7-6 Cowboys in a game that has playoff implications for both teams. The Steelers need to win two of their final three games - with one of those wins needing to come over the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 16.
Dallas sits in the eighth spot in the NFC, a game behind Chicago (8-5) for the last wild card spot.
The Steelers cannot afford to look ahead to the Bengals, nor should they have any inclination to do so. The Cowboys, winners of four of their last five games, are heating up in time for the stretch run.
Whether their 3-5 start will prove to be too wide of a gap to overcome remains to be seen, but clearly, this isn't a team that's giving up.
They're hosting a Steelers team that finds itself, oddly, playing better on the road as of late than at home. Or any road venue outside of Cleveland, at least.
The Steelers had a dramatic 23-20 comeback victory over Baltimore in Week 13, following back-to-back poor showings at Heinz Field against the same Ravens team in Week 11, and against 3-10 Kansas City. They had another come-from-behind win at the Giants in Week 9.
It's also a game in which the Steelers can get a proverbial monkey off their backs. The last time the Steelers played in Dallas, they lost Super Bowl XLV 31-25 to the Green Bay Packers.