Todd Haley: Pittsburgh Steelers will be in the Super Bowl

Feb 3, 2013; New Orleans, LA, USA; Baltimore Ravens safety Ed Reed (20) celebrates with the Vince Lombardi Trophy after defeating the San Francisco 49ers 34-31 in Super Bowl XLVII at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

The Pittsburgh Steelers aren’t exactly a long shot to make the Super Bowl. They’ve played in 3 over the last 10 years and won the big game twice. That still isn’t stopping Steelers offensive coordinator Todd Haley from making bold predictions.

“As a team,” Haley said, “our expectation is to get to that confetti game, as Coach Tomlin likes to call it.”

They use the term ‘confetti game’ to avoid actually saying “Super Bowl.” What’s sports with out superstitions right?

“I’m excited. I think everybody is excited,” Haley said. “We’re going to have some young guys who will have to come in and perform, but the thing that came out of last year was we got a lot of young people some playing time, specifically on the offensive line, which is invaluable. The Kelvin Beachums and the Mike Adamses, and even David DeCastro, who wasn’t 100 percent but still got some real-time snaps – that should help them a bunch. I would expect great development up front, and I think our quarterback is as good as anybody’s. We just need to do a better job of protecting him and him of protecting himself. And we need to run the ball more efficiently, because I think we’ll be able to throw it with anybody.”

They lost deep threat Mike Wallace this offseason to the Miami Dolphins, so the Steelers offense has some hurdles to overcome before they can begin thinking about confetti.