Some folks seem to feel the Pittsburgh Steelers are the favorites to win the Super Bowl.

Steps are being taken to reverse this horrible affliction.

Item No. 1 for B/R NFL Summit—4-hour presentation to @MikeFreemanNFL & @NFLDraftScout on why PIT isn't winning SB. Packing up charts/graphs.

— Michael Schottey (@Schottey) August 19, 2013

 

While we wait for the medicine to kick in, the Steelers head to our Nation's capitol for a game against the Washington Redskins. Here are three things to watch while we try to talk confused people out of their clearly drunken Super Bowl predictions.

1) Has the age of the Steelers' defense finally caught up to them? They've replaced old players with good players but those good players aren't always quite as good as the veterans they replaced. While Robert Griffin III isn't playing, Kirk Cousins has been more than adequate in his absence. The younger/newer players for the Steelers need to step up, even in the preseason.

2) The receivers for Washington have slowly started to form into a unit. While we knew Pierre Garcon would be productive, the first game saw some solid effort by Leonard Hankerson as well. There's a long way to go before this unit is reliable, but it will be interesting to see if the guys who stepped up last week can do the same Monday night.

3) Rookie Le'Veon Bell will finally see his first bit of preseason action and in fact will start for the Steelers at running back. Reports say he has been head and shoulders above the backs already on the roster and there's every chance he quite literally runs away with the job Monday night. Washington has had issues stopping the run over the past year, so Bell looks set up to succeed in his first start.

Andrew Garda is a member of the Pro Football Writers Association. He is also a member of the fantasy football staff at Footballguys.com and an NFL writer at Bleacher Report. You can follow him at @andrew_garda on Twitter.