Sunday Night Football Preview: Seahawks vs Steelers Preview

This week’s Sunday Night Football matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and Pittsburgh Steelers should be interesting for a number of reasons. With injuries plaguing both offenses, the question heading into this matchup will be which players can step up and help their teams put points on the board.

Pittsburgh enters as a five-point favorite, but this game is far from a sure thing in favor of its AFC North representative.

Seattle Seahawks

Last week, the Seattle Seahawks lost on Thursday Night Football to the Los Angeles Rams, but they lost much more than a football game. Russell Wilson was injured in that game and has since been put on injured reserve, meaning he will be out until at least Week 10. In his place will be Geno Smith, who was decent in the second half against the Rams, but ultimately unable to get the Seahawks offense in position to win that game.

Making matters worse for the Seahawks is that starting running back, Chris Carson has also been placed on injured reserve. Seattle could use all of the skill position help it can get to help Geno Smith play his best on Sunday night. But without Carson and with DK Metcalf not at 100% physically, Seattle will really have to pull together if they want to score a road win over the Steelers.

Pittsburgh Steelers

The Pittsburgh Steelers got a much-needed win last week against the Denver Broncos to avoid dropping to 1-4 on the season. But the 2-3 Steelers also received some bad news on the injury front last week when JuJu Smith-Schuster suffered a shoulder injury that has been determined to be of the season-ending variety. Now the Steelers will look to put up enough points to win this game despite several injuries in their receiving corps.

Along with Smith-Schuster’s injury, Chase Claypool had been on the injury report as questionable, though he is expected to play on Sunday night. With Ben Roethlisberger struggling to deliver the ball consistently this season, the Steelers will need as many healthy targets as possible. As long as Roethlisberger can keep the turnovers to a minimum, Pittsburgh is expected to compile back-to-back wins for the first time this season.

Keys to the Game

The biggest key to this game on both sides will be generating offense despite struggles to do so with their current array of weapons. Geno Smith is not exactly synonymous with offensive firepower, as evidenced by his previous stops with the Jets and Giants. And Ben Roethlisberger has looked entirely past his prime this season, despite being seen as the better quarterback in this matchup.

With both offenses expected to have their peaks and valleys in this matchup, both defenses will be a key to this game. It is always difficult on defense to have to go out and defend after their offense struggled on the previous possession. And both of these defenses should expect to experience that exact scenario, with both sides needing to ignore the production of their offenses to focus on getting stops.