4 teams advanced to their respective conference championship games today! Not one of them had Antonio Brown or LeVeon Bell on their roster! In fact not one of the 12 teams that made the playoffs had either of them on their team!
To make this a Steeler topic now. No our window hasn't closed even if neither of those two are on our roster. We still got a special offensive line, a franchise qb, strong tight ends ( over 80 catches and 1000 yards between them) and Ju Ju and James Conner.
Yes we got to tighten things up defensively and tweak some things on offense. But find me a team without a hole? We lost 3 games in large part due to poor officiating. Luck is part of sports believe it or not. And luck mostly was against us in many circumstances this season. Anyway with nothing else changed we could easily have 3 more wins and been the 2 seed going into this years playoffs.
Sometimes you see that aberration season in the middle of a run. With the Steelers you had a 9-7 barely snuck into the playoff season stuck in between 4 SB wins in 77. More recently you had the 6-10 03 season that netted the Steelers Ben stuck in between 4 seasons of 10+ win seasons.
Outside of the Steelers I can offer you the Colts who put in a sub par 8-6 season in 69 between 4 season where they lost a total of 7 games total. Just that snake bit season where little goes right. That's where they stand now in my opinion. They can turn this around in a heart beat. The window is far from closed.