Because some of these things happened early, they tend to be forgotten, but the Steelers played against a real contender on the road in a short week missing 7 guys who were projected to be starters - Fautanu, Daniels, Porter, Jackson, Elliott, Pickens, and Ogunjobi, plus Watt was clearly not 100% - not many teams are going to fare well in that circumstance. Doesn't change the fact that the WR room is unacceptable, the defense is still constantly blowing assignments this late in the season, and the roster is not where it needs to be - but not many teams are going to win missing that many starters and key contributors. I also really, really don't understand what's up with the usage of Friermuth and Williams, particularly with Pickens out.
The below kind of makes me think they held guys out yesterday:
To have 5 guys who didn't play 18 hours ago be deemed to have a "real chance" to play in 3 days really suggests to me they kind of punted yesterday to try to win the last 2.