OTL: Ravens vs. Steelers – Who Wants It More? Really?

We’re heading down the stretch of the regular season, and with five games to go, the AFC North is wide open. Our guy Chris discussed the fallout from this past week in yesterday’s column, and he detailed its implications for who could ultimately grab a postseason berth.

The AFC North has become a 3-horse race on Kalshi.

Can Joe Burrow lead the Bengals to an improbable comeback? pic.twitter.com/I6MNxwZ3hz

— Kalshi Sports (@KalshiSports) December 1, 2025

Right now, there are tons of moving parts, and this weekend’s game obviously has massive importance for the Ravens and Steelers. As I looked at these two teams on paper and began spinning my wheels imagining a thousand different directions that this rivalry matchup could go, an interesting coach-ism popped into my head, and not for the reason that you might think. The phrase that kept running through my mind was, “How badly do you want it?”

Pittsburgh needs to address their QB situation aggressively via draft this offseason. Stop with the plug and play shenanigans https://t.co/vnupJI3y2p

— Samuel Njoku (@RavensTalkPod) December 1, 2025

When I asked Mike Tomlin about the chants to fire him:

“Man, I share their frustrations tonight. We didn’t do enough. That’s just the reality of it.” #Steelers pic.twitter.com/CmjBZiKlHp

— Christopher Carter (@CarterCritiques) December 1, 2025

Let me preface this by saying that no team, no matter how bad, is approaching their games with the intention of losing and tanking for draft stock. Ownership or the front office can make decisions to steer a season in that direction if it looks like all is lost, which certainly isn’t the case for the AFC North’s top teams still vying for a title. Still, at a certain point, if the eye test tells you that your team is going to be outside of the playoff window looking in, or if they’re going to be cannon fodder for a more complete team early in the playoffs, hindsight may have one or more of these teams wishing they’d leaned into shutting it down earlier in the year.

What you see above is the culmination of many years of Pittsburgh being stuck in a roster-building no man’s land, hamstrung by a lack of top-tier Draft capital and the shortcomings in development of guys they had high hopes for, whether those were through the Draft, free agency or trades. They haven’t gotten to the point recently of being truly bad enough or leaning hard enough into the rebuild to get their franchise guy at QB, and they’ve been paying for it for years. There’s plenty of blame to go around in the Steel City, but Mike Tomlin has been at the center of the ire from Steeler fans over the last few seasons for inflexibility in roster decisions, including an unwillingness to embrace the development of younger players that would have benefitted from starting.

You’ll get no sympathy from me toward the Steelers and their struggles, but a lot of those same gripes are sounding a little close to home, right? An embattled coaching staff, major questions about the development of young players at key positions…

One of my biggest takeaways from Emery Jones’ film is how much more of a fluid athlete he is.

What’s going to come is his game speed (his athletic ability merging with his processing).

As his processing skills improve, you’ll start to see more quickness.#RavensFlock

— Cole Jackson (@ColeJacksonFB) December 1, 2025

…and even ongoing discussions about players returning from injury being all for naught, potentially risking setbacks?

Better win. I imagine he’ll have the full 3-wk ramp up if not more and if they lose the next couple, really makes no sense for him to return.

— Jeff Zrebiec (@jeffzrebiec) December 1, 2025

I don’t ever want to believe that the best thing for Baltimore would have been to continue piling up losses. In fact, I would love to see them bounce back from a miserable loss, come out pissed off and whoop the Steelers, grab a chokehold on the division title and never let it go, then make a run in the playoffs. But wanting that level of success doesn’t mean that the ills that have been plaguing them all season suddenly become cured if the guys want it badly enough. If they can come together and play all three phases of the game as a complete team, it needs to happen right now.

This Sunday’s game feels like a subplot could very well be that the coaches are playing for their jobs, but there are vocal segments of each of these fanbases that don’t want to see the same coaching staff for their team next year. This game feels massive, and not just because the Ravens-Steelers faceoff normally feels that way anyway. It feels like it marks the commitment to each team’s course of action for this season and beyond. It feels like this could be the point that we look back and either say that the Ravens righted the ship and put themselves in position for a shot at a title, or that we look at a five-game winning streak becoming much ado about nothing, delaying the inevitable and hurting the team’s chances to get top-tier talent while Lamar Jackson and Kyle Hamilton are your centerpieces.

The Ravens are officially 1st again in the AFC North

Just go do your jobs @Ravens pic.twitter.com/klm9qdwuEw

— The Ravens Realm (@RealmRavens) December 1, 2025

If they possess the ball for 35+ minutes and the Ravens lose there should be a firing https://t.co/CXCpW9W1mP

— Spenny Powers (@ravens4dummies) December 1, 2025

This week absolutely cannot be some blasé effort. They need the win for the standings, but they need it even more so to make this season feel like it’s still salvageable. Otherwise, heads will roll, but far later than they needed to, and even wins may begin to feel like the team is missing out on what could have been.

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