{"id":38776,"date":"2025-07-04T18:55:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T18:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/38776\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T18:55:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T18:55:12","slug":"pittsburgh-pundit-says-steelers-are-trying-to-be-the-ravens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/38776\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Pundit Says Steelers Are Trying to Be the Ravens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Pittsburgh Pundit Says Steelers Are Trying to Be the Ravens<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s been a noteworthy offseason for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and one pundit believes the team’s moves were largely made with the Ravens in mind.<\/p>\n

Steelers Now\u2019s Alan Saunders<\/a> contended that the Steelers tailored their roster with the goal not only of defeating the two-time defending AFC North champion Ravens, but also of becoming them.<\/p>\n

“A hundred percent the Steelers are trying to be the Ravens and are trying to defeat the Ravens with their own game,” Saunders said. “Let’s be honest: If the Steelers win the AFC North, if they go out and they’re better than the Ravens, beat them on the field, win the division, that’s what they need to do to put themselves in the best possible scenario to go win a playoff game or two.<\/p>\n

“The Bengals are a good team and they’re a different challenge, but they’re ain’t nobody [at Steelers headquarters] sweating over the Bengals, even though they’re very good, the way they’re worried about the Baltimore Ravens. That’s just how it is.”<\/p>\n

Saunders pointed to the Ravens’ dominant, 28-14 win over the Steelers in the wild-card round last January as a motivating factor in Pittsburgh’s offseason decisions.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you give up 299 yards rushing in a playoff game and then you go use your first-round pick on a defensive tackle,” Saunders said. “Oh, and by the way, another pick on a defensive tackle, and an edge rusher who specializes in stopping the run. And then you sign away Baltimore’s biggest linebacker [Malik Harrison]. That happens directly because of what happened in that playoff game.”<\/p>\n

Saunders argued the Steelers traded for tight end Jonnu Smith in an effort to replicate the Ravens’ dynamic tight end duo of Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely with Smith and Pat Freiermuth.<\/p>\n

“What the Ravens have with Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely is very unique,” Saunders said. “It puts a ton of stress on a defense, in addition to everything else the Ravens are doing, because you have to take your big linebacker off the field because he can’t cover either of those guys. So, how do you defend it? It’s difficult.<\/p>\n

“And I think all those moves the Steelers made to upgrade the defensive line, bringing in Malik Harrison, even [trading for cornerback] Jalen Ramsey, I think helps in terms of how you deal with Isaiah Likely.”<\/p>\n

Harrison is the third former member of the Ravens’ defense to join the Steelers over the past year. Pittsburgh signed inside linebacker Patrick Queen and safety DeShon Elliott last offseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Pundit Says Steelers Are Trying to Be the Ravens It’s been a noteworthy offseason for the Pittsburgh…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[834,10013,31153,1232,10012,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-38776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-general","9":"tag-homepage-latest-headlines","10":"tag-late-for-work","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-offseason","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114796489832675365","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}