Aaron Rodgers Made History in Paris, but the Steelers' 5-2 Is Being Built on the Ground

Aaron Rodgers' touchdown pass in Sunday's 16-10 win over the Saints didn't just get the Steelers out of Stade de France with a victory — it moved him alone into third place on the NFL's career touchdown pass list. A milestone like that usually reads as the story of a quarterback's season. In Pittsburgh, it's more like a footnote to one.

The Steelers are 5-2, riding a three-game winning streak, and tied with Cleveland atop the AFC North. They got there while their quarterback produced one of the more uneven stat lines of his career: 1,699 yards on 263 attempts, 13 touchdowns, five interceptions, a 61.6 completion percentage and an 88.9 passer rating. The 6.5 yards per attempt is the number that matters most — it's a dink-and-dunk profile, and it comes with 22 sacks taken, a 7.7 percent sack rate that has repeatedly put this offense behind the chains.

What's actually working

Jaylen Warren. He has 561 rushing yards on 102 carries and another 294 yards on 24 catches — 855 scrimmage yards through seven games. In Paris, with the passing game stuck in neutral, the backs were the offense. That tracks with the trend data: Pittsburgh has averaged 26.0 points and 377.0 total yards over its last five games, up from 21.9 and 348.9 over the full season, with the rushing output climbing to 118.8 yards per game in that window.

The defense, meanwhile, has quietly tightened. After a rocky stretch that included the Week 4 loss in Cleveland, Pittsburgh has allowed 17.0 points and 298.3 yards per game over its last three. Season-long marks of 19.7 points allowed and a plus-2.1 point differential aren't dominant, but they're the reason a one-touchdown outing in France was survivable.

The nagging issue is turnover margin, which sits at minus-0.4 over the last ten games and minus-0.7 over the last three. Rodgers has cleaned up his interception rate recently — 0.9 percent and a 99.0 rating across his last three — but the giveaways and sacks have kept winnable games uncomfortably close.

Now comes the real test

Week 8 brings Cleveland to Acrisure Stadium on Nov. 1, and the stakes are as clean as they get in October: the Browns are also 5-2, and the two teams are level at 0.714 in the division. The Bengals (4-2) and Ravens (4-3) are close enough that a loss here costs more than a tiebreaker.

Cleveland already beat Pittsburgh 27-24 in Week 4, a Thursday-night loss that dropped the Steelers to 2-2 and prompted a week of hard questions about the offense's identity. The market has taken notice of the rematch — the line opened at Pittsburgh -4.5 and has been bet down to -3.0, with a 39.5 total and the home side carrying roughly 65 percent implied probability. That's respect for the record, not conviction about the offense.

Injury picture

Michael Pittman Jr. remains a multi-week absence with a foot issue, and the receiver room has been thin enough that the Steelers lost two wideouts in quick succession against Indianapolis earlier this month. DK Metcalf's availability has helped offset that, though Pat Freiermuth's calf has threatened the depth at tight end. The official Week 8 injury report is not yet available, so nothing definitive can be said about Sunday's availability.

The read

Pittsburgh's record is real, and so is the three-game cover streak. But the formula is narrow: run the ball through Warren, lean on a defense allowing 17 points a game over the last three, and ask Rodgers to manage rather than carry. Against a Cleveland team that already beat them once and shares their record, the margin for another 16-10 slog is thin. The milestone in Paris will be remembered. Whether this season is depends on what happens Sunday.