It’s no secret that Sunday’s game against the Raiders is a rather important one. After a wacky, back and forth kind of game that saw the Steeler defense put up more points than the Steeler offense, Sunday’s visit to the Raiders is of crucial importance for both sides of the ball.

But, there’s an extra challenge that presents itself for the Steelers on national television when they play on Sunday Night Football: history.

Since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, the Steelers and Raiders have played against each other 31 times (including playoffs). Of those 31 games, the Raiders have won 17 of them. Overall, it’s been a fairly even series.

However, when the Steelers are on the road, Pittsburgh has an abysmal 5-11 record since 1970, including two different 4-game losing streaks.

Those stats alone are stunning, but this might be the worst one: the Steelers haven’t beat the Raiders on the road since December 10th, 1995, almost 30 years ago.

Since then, the Steelers have had four tries while away to secure a win, but have failed each time. In fairness, they’ve kept all the games close; each game of the last four were one score efforts, including the last three straight games, which were all decided by a field goal. But it just hasn’t been enough.

What’s most interesting about this inability to beat the Raiders on the road is that the city itself hasn’t mattered.

Notice how I have just been calling them the Raiders, and given no specific city. That’s because the Raiders have been the Oakland Raiders, the Los Angeles Raiders, then back to Oakland again, and now the Las Vegas Raiders.

But no matter where the Steelers and Raiders have met over the course of time, if Pittsburgh traveled to be there, they’ve probably lost.

It’s an odd occurence to lose to one team so often on the road, despite the fact that they’ve played from m

Their most recent outing in Oakland came back on December 9th, 2018. A close, back and forth game between a terrible Raiders team and spiraling Steelers squad saw Pittsburgh give up a go-ahead touchdown with just 21 seconds left in the game.

In a desperate last ditch effort, Ben Roethlisberger throws a short pass to James Washington, who does a nifty lateral to JuJu Smith-Schuster to rumbles 43 yards down the field. It was magic, setting up the Steelers to kick a field goal and send the game to overtime.

But, it was not to be. Chris Boswell slips on the field goal try, and the ball is easily blocked, giving Oakland a 24-21 win.

That was not only the last time the Steelers were on the road versus the Raiders, but the last time they played any team from Oakland.

Since the Raiders’ move to Las Vegas, these two teams have met twice, both in Pittsburgh.

Las Vegas got the best of Pittsburgh in 2021, winning 26-17, but the Steelers got revenge the following year in that snoozefest-turned-thriller Christmas Eve game, 13-10.

Last season, the rookie Kenny Pickett led a game-winning touchdown drive that ended with a pass to fellow rookie George Pickens. Soon after, Cam Sutton would intercept a deep ball try by Derek Carr to seal the game for Pittsburgh.

But this is a very different Raiders team than the Steelers saw less than a calendar year ago. Carr is out at QB, and has been replaced by Jimmy Garoppolo.

The Raider offense, while not as bad as Pittsburgh’s, has struggled so far this season. Vegas has scored 27 total points so far this season, and like the Steelers, have had a difficult time running the ball.

Their offense currently sits near the bottom of the league (like Pittsburgh’s), and they’ve had some penalty trouble as well. Vegas is coming off of a blowout loss to the Buffalo Bills, who were the victim of a Josh Allen revenge game after his terrible Week 1.

It will be Kenny Pickett’s second time facing the Raiders, after that previously talked about Christmas Eve game. In his first outing against them, he went 26/39 with one touchdown and one interception. In all, he threw for 244 yards, his fourth highest total of the 2022 season.

After two horrific weeks, Pickett needs a bounce back now more than ever. The Steelers defense is the only reason Pittsburgh isn’t starting the season 0-2, and now Pickett and the offense need to return the favor.

Matt Canada needs to step it up as well. Warren Sharp gave an amazing analysis on everything wrong with the current Steelers offense, which I highly recommend you check out. But in an incredibly short summary, the Steelers offense is far too predictable.

It doesn’t matter how good of a defense you are playing if you are showing said defenses exactly what kind of play you are going to run based on your form.

But Canada clearly has absolutely no intentions on changing anything, except trying to show Acrisure Stadium how smart he was by running a QB run play from 3rd and 2 and getting Pickett taken down immediately for a loss.

If the Steelers offense has any kind of success, it will be in spite of, not because of, Matt Canada. And that starts with Kenny nailing down some consistency. Pickett has a completion percentage of just 60.53% this season so far. He completed only 50% of his passes on Monday night.

While the actual problem is hard to diagnose (Canada’s scheming sucks, but he can’t make Kenny throw an accurate ball), it’s been a concerning pattern for the sophomore quarterback. He’s missed easy down the field passes, and his vision for open receivers seems to be struggling as well.

Pickett needs to focus and clean up his decision making as well. His interception against the Browns was because of a poor judgement call, and Cleveland should have had an easy second interception off Pickett on what was far worse decision making by Pickett. Kenny was incredibly lucky the defender had taken a bath in butter during halftime.

Fans should have a lot of faith in the Steelers’ defense after a bounce back Week 2, but Pittsburgh can’t rely on them to constantly keep the team in games, and they definitely can’t count on them to score MORE points than the OFFENSE.

It’s a critical game Sunday night, one that may or may not answer a lot of the questions surrounding this team.

(Featured photo by Kelley L Cox/USA TODAY Sports)