The 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers entered the playoffs as a wild card team. As a No. 6 seed, they were the last team in the AFC field and went on to win the Super Bowl. The 2024 Pittsburgh Steelers are heading into the playoffs as a wild card team, and QB Russell Wilson got some advice from former Steelers RB Jerome Bettis on how this team navigated its path to the playoffs to help with the current version of the Steelers to get.

“I had a cool conversation with Jerome Bettis this morning and talked to him about the 2005 football team. There were some bumps and bruises and some things that happened and some losses along the way, and I think they went away sixth in the game, he told me, and it was cool to talk to The Bus about exactly that because I wanted to make it. “I have some perspective on how the team approached it,” Wilson said via the YouTube Team channel.

“The reality was that this week is the only week that matters. And this team overcame many obstacles and was able to respond correctly. I believe we will be like that. Respond correctly. I have no doubt about the guys in our locker room and obviously Coach Tomlin and who he is good at.”

The 2005 Steelers finished the regular season on a three-game winning streak and didn’t stop winning, while this year’s Steelers will enter the playoffs as losers of four straight games. The 2005 team struggled with adversity, losing three straight games from Weeks 11 to 13, dropping them from 7-2 to 7-5, but they won every game from then on. QB Ben Roethlisberger was also injured several times during the season, as was Wilson this season.

Wilson said it doesn’t really matter when the losses happened because both teams still deal with some level of adversity after a losing streak. But it’s difficult to make a true one-to-one comparison because the 2005 Steelers entered the postseason with some momentum, while this team has no momentum at all with four straight losses that weren’t pretty.

However, the 2005 team figured something out after their three-game losing streak, and the Steelers will look to do the same in the postseason. Mike Tomlin preached the importance of learning from what went wrong last month rather than trying to whitewash it, and the Steelers really need to work on finding the root cause of their problems on both sides of the ball .

It won’t be easy to win as a Wild Card team, especially if the Steelers have to travel to Baltimore, but it’s good leadership from Wilson to talk to a team legend and try to get some perspective on what it’s like needs to win a Super Bowl in Pittsburgh. Winning in the playoffs is never easy, and it’s especially hard when a struggling team enters the postseason. But Russell Wilson is looking for ways to motivate the group, and it’s not entirely out of the question for the Steelers to band together and put it to the test.

It may not be likely, but stranger things have happened, and the Steelers have a veteran group that will be eager to figure things out and surprise with some playoff success.