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b'The Steelers shuffle off to Buffalo to face the playoff-built Bills in Week 1 of the 2021 NFL season. It doesn\\u2019t get any easier from there, either.\\xa0The Steelers are facing a brutal 2021 schedule regardless of how you slice and dice it. If you believe in stats, Pittsburgh is starring at an NFL gauntlet of games that ranks as the league\\u2019s most difficult. But it\\u2019s not only the opponents the Steelers face that spell trouble. It\\u2019s the way this particular team is built for this season that could deflate all that Pittsburgh playoff optimism yet again. I\\u2019m talking about assembling the 2021 Steelers around a past-his-prime Hall of Fame quarterback named Ben Roethlisberger. At 39, Big Ben increasingly doesn\\u2019t resemble the once-mobile, nearly impossible-to-bring-down passer that has earned him HOF enshrinement. With Big Ben under center, all Pittsburgh could muster last season was a pop-gun attack built around Ben\\u2019s short, quick throws from the pocket. It literally got batted down, and the Steelers were one-and-done in the playoffs, with the Browns showing them the exit. Ouch! This year, the Steelers are betting that a revamped running game built on the back of rookie Najee Harris and road-graded by a rejuvenated offensive line offers the best chance for Ben\\u2019s swansong of a season to end successfully. But the biggest hurdle preventing such a story-book Steelers\\u2019 ending will those chapters \\u2013 i.e. games -- that fall between Thanksgiving and New Years\\u2019. Far from being festive, this is precisely the pivot point where good teams rise and pretenders fall away. If past is prologue, Pittsburgh and its playoff aspirations could be in real trouble. And this was before the NFL gauntlet was extended by an additional, 17th game. It will be that much harder for Ben and the boys to keep it all together in 2021. Sure, Roethlisberger\\xa0will give it everything he has on last time. We know that. We just don\\u2019t know what maximum effort from Big Ben\\u2019s depleted tank will look like \\u2013 and whether it\\u2019s anything close to what it used to be.\\xa0Only time \\u2013 and that brutal slate of a 2021 Steelers\\u2019 schedule, will tell. Check out the podcast for much more game-by-game analysis in this highly scheduled edition of the Steelers Update Podcast. And be\\xa0sure to catch Thursday morning\\u2019s column on PennLive. It will be packed with plenty of memes that perfectly capture the challenge presented by each of Steelers\\u2019 contests comprising this intriguing 2021 season.\\xa0 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'