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In college football, where the Bowl Championship Series system identifies a chosen two to play for the title, 5-4-1 teams are long since eliminated from championship contention.

A 5-4-1 college team is still a win short of attaining bowl eligibility, period.

It's much different in pro football, where the Steelers at 5-4-1 continue to lead the AFC North and remain both a good bet to make the postseason and a possibility to do well there, despite this latest rough patch.

That helped take some of the sting out of a 31-23 loss at Tennessee. The same rhetoric that worked when the Steelers were 0-2 or 1-3, still applies, with modifications. Now, time is shorter, but still sufficient.

Even so, there was a sense of urgency among the Steelers, obvious even to the myopic, in the wake of the loss to the Titans.

"We've got to finish up," Joey Porter said. "We've got six more games right now that we know of and we've got to play those as hard as we can to get to the playoffs."

Six more regular-season games it is, and largely against stumbling, bumbling opposition. Next up at Heinz Field is Cincinnati, possessor of the worst record in pro football at 1-9. Remaining games, in order, are at Jacksonville (5-5), Houston (2-8), Carolina (3-7), at Tampa Bay (8-2) and Baltimore (4-6).

The challenge for the Steelers becomes displaying resiliency once again. The opening poundings at the hands of New England and Oakland had given way to a tough overtime win against Cleveland.

A high-scoring, three-point loss at New Orleans put the season in early jeopardy, but the Steelers responded with wins over Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Baltimore and Cleveland.

It could have, should have been five consecutive wins, but a 17-point, fourth-quarter lead got away in a 34-all tie with Atlanta. Then, most recently, the Steelers got handled by Tennessee.

It is time to find out how much is left in the resiliency tank.

"Well, I don't know," Jerome Bettis said. "We'll see. It's a hard one. It's one of those things, you don't prepare for it. We've picked ourselves up before. We just have to do it again.

"You can't become discouraged because you still have a lot of football left. We've still got a chance to correct some of those mistakes we've made."

The schedule gods have dealt the Steelers an apparent gift, a chance to bounce back immediately with a sub-standard opponent. Beat the Bengals — almost every does — and a 6-4-1 record looks good in the division and competitive in an American Conference where currently Denver and San Diego share the best record at 7-3 each.

History, too, speaks to reason for relative optimism for the Steelers who were thought to be Super heading into this season. In 1995, the last season that saw the Steelers reach the Super Bowl, they began with a 3-4 record and were 6-4 after 10 games, barely ahead of this season's 5-4-1 pace.

There is an awareness of that, tempered with a realization that more losses will make it that much more difficult for this season to be all so many had anticipated.

"We've narrowed the margin and have kind of backed ourselves into a corner," coach Bill Cowher said. "We've got six weeks to do something about it."

To be sure, the Steelers have what Cowher called "issues."

The Titans converted 12 of 19 third downs, which has become a shortcoming of the Steelers defense.

Todd Peterson missed a couple of field goals, from 31 and 37 yards.

If these trends continue, forget it. But, if the Steelers fix the problem areas, its not hard to imagine them winning at least four of the remaining six games, maybe five.

That puts the win total at 9 or 10. Cleveland, second in the AFC North at 5-5, then would need to win either five of its remaining six, or six of six, to beat out the Steelers.

Considering the Browns still must play at New Orleans, Jacksonville and Baltimore, and have home games with Carolina, Indianapolis and Atlanta, that seems a tall order.

The Steelers remain a likely playoff team. They have six games to fine-tune their play in order to give them the chance to prosper there.

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