Can the Steelers shake off another slump in time for the playoffs?

The Steelers started the season slow and figured things out. Will they right the ship again after another rough patch?

When September ended, the Pittsburgh Steelers had a losing record and enough drama to raise serious doubts about their chances at a rebound. That didn’t last long. The Steelers rattled off six consecutive wins to right the ship.

But Pittsburgh has hit another speed bump.

After barely escaping with a come-from-behind win against the floundering Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 11, the Steelers lost winnable games in each of the last two weeks. After outgaining the Broncos by more than 200 yards, Pittsburgh found a way to lose, 24-17. Then the Steelers blew a 23-7 halftime lead to lose 33-30 to the Chargers.

James Conner suffered a leg injury in the loss, and a defense that held five consecutive opponents to 275 yards or less gave up over 300 yards in each of the last two weeks.

Meanwhile, the Baltimore Ravens — who split the season series with Pittsburgh — are now 7-5 after three straight wins and just a half-game behind the 7-4-1 Steelers.

With four weeks left to play, the Steelers have drama brewing again and can’t afford to continue to slog through their December slate. Is Pittsburgh still a contender, or is the season circling the drain?

A case for the Steelers being in trouble

After the Steelers lost to the Broncos, Ben Roethlisberger told 93.7 The Fan in Pittsburgh that his receivers deserved some blame.

The quarterback said a fourth-quarter interception that sealed the win for the Broncos happened partly because of poor route-running by Antonio Brown.

“This was a … play where I’m reading the safety to the weakside where AB is,” Roethlisberger said. “If the safety comes down and takes away the run, I pull the ball back and throw the ball to Antonio, who is supposed to be running a real flat, down-the-line kind of route … [The cornerback] did undercut AB … that’s where I talked to AB, like ‘AB you have to come flat. You can’t drift in the end zone or those undercuts happen.’”

Roethlisberger’s criticism probably has validity, but the pass never really had a chance because it was intercepted by a defensive tackle before the undercutting cornerback even had a chance at it.

Roethlisberger also dished out some criticism for rookie receiver James Washington, who made an unsuccessful attempt at a diving catch.

“I’m not really sure what he was doing ... James needs to run through that, and it’s a touchdown.”

That criticism is also fair, but did it need to be said publicly? Roethlisberger has justifiably earned the respect of his teammates, but it’s hard to see what finger pointing through the media gets accomplished — especially when Roethlisberger has six interceptions in the Steelers’ last three games.

“I would hope that they would understand that as the quarterback and the captain that I have the right to do those things,” Roethlisberger told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review when asked about his teammates’ reactions to his comments. “I don’t feel like I abuse that situation. So I don’t think it’s an issue, but you would have to ask them.”

Brown brushed Roethlisberger’s comments off as no big deal.

And they didn’t slow him down in Week 13 when he had a season-high 10 receptions and 154 receiving yards against the Chargers. But Brown’s frustrations were apparent in September when the Steelers weren’t winning.

Will Brown and the rest of the Pittsburgh locker room continue to put up with Roethlisberger’s blame game if he continues to throw interceptions and the Steelers can’t get back on track? And even if the drama doesn’t boil over, is Pittsburgh even good enough to win big games anyway?

Five of the Steelers’ seven wins came against teams that are under .500. Their other two came against the currently 6-6 Panthers, and the Ravens, who also managed to beat the Steelers in Week 4.

Pittsburgh has only had two other games against teams who currently have winning records — the Chiefs and Chargers — and both were losses for the Steelers. That doesn’t bode well for the team’s chances in December when matchups against the Patriots and Saints are coming in Weeks 15 and 16.

The Steelers defense struggled early in the season, but pulled itself together to become an elite unit in October and November. Now would be a bad time for it to revert to its September form, especially if Conner misses time and the Steelers struggle to establish themselves on the ground.

It’s getting hard to have faith this is a team that can win games in January.

A case for the Steelers being just fine

Because the Steelers are always fine. Pittsburgh has ups and downs, but when January rolls around, the Steelers are usually in the playoffs and usually a contender.

There have been plenty of rough stretches during the Roethlisberger era, but not once since he got drafted have the Steelers finished with a losing record. Games against the Raiders and Bengals in Weeks 14 and 17 mean that streak almost definitely won’t end in 2018.

The Steelers have been here before. Many times.

“It’s football. I mean, it stinks. I hate losing at home, I hate it for our fans. I hate losing it for my linemen and the rest of these guys but we’ll come in (today), we’ll look at it and we’ll move on,” Roethlisberger told reporters after the loss to the Chargers.

Nobody is panicking.

“You gotta win those, we didn’t,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said Sunday. “There are consequences, we’ll absorb it. We’ll be back.”

And you should believe him. The Steelers are still No. 4 in total offense and No. 7 in total defense. Roethlisberger has a 95.1 passer rating this season and two receivers — Antonio Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster — who have already eclipsed 1,000 yards on the year. And the injury to Conner isn’t expected to be serious either.

The defense wasn’t at its best in the last two weeks, but it wasn’t exactly torched either. The Chargers offense was averaging more than 400 yards per game before it finished with 371 against the Steelers.

“We know exactly what we can do,” rookie safety Terrell Edmunds said, via Steelers.com. “We know we’re going to give it a run regardless. Yeah, we got two losses (in succession) right now but we’re going to come out even harder next week. We’re going to have that chip on our shoulder. We just gotta come out with a win and then from there we can just keep on stacking.

“We don’t have our heads down or anything but at the same time we’ve got that bite. We’re all ‘dawgs’ in here, we’re all together, we’re all family so we’re going to come out with a win next week.”

Yes, the Steelers have back-to-back losses, but neither game was a disaster. Mistakes against the Broncos were self-inflicted, and the Chargers needed several lucky breaks to escape Pittsburgh with a three-point win in Week 13. The Steelers only need a few tweaks and some bounces to go their way, and they’ll be all right.

Even after losing Sunday, the Steelers still have the best record in the last month of the season since 2013.

Starting December with a losing streak is far from ideal, but the Ravens have games against the Chiefs and Chargers coming, so the Steelers are still in good shape to win the AFC North. And if Pittsburgh’s in the playoffs, it’s a team you can never count out.