The 2016 season is unfortunately over, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are now embarking upon their latest offseason journey, heading back to the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, formerly known and still referred to as the ‘South Side’ facility of Heinz Field. While the postseason is now behind us, there is plenty left to discuss.
And there are plenty of questions left unanswered as well. The offseason is just really the beginning phase of the answer-seeking process, which is lasts all the way through the Super Bowl for teams fortunate enough to reach that far.
You can rest assured that we have the questions, and we will be monitoring the developments in the offseason as they develop, and beyond, looking for the answers as we look to evaluate the makeup of the Steelers as they try to navigate their way back to the Super Bowl, after reaching the AFC Championship game last season for the first time in more than half a decade.
Question: Do you tune out of following your favorite team during the low periods of the offseason?
The NFL has tried to do everything in their power to make their sport an every-day event. While the game obviously has its peaks and valleys, they try to generate excitement and content throughout the calendar—they kind of have to, since they have an entire television network that they need to keep running.
While the league consistently keeps up its engagement efforts, however, there comes no obligation for fans to stay engaged. I know that in the past I have not always closely followed the minutiae of the offseason the way they I have begun to do for the past several years myself, and I recall reading many comments toward the end of the playoff to the effect of ‘see you when something happens again’.
So today’s question on the Depot is this: do you stay engaged throughout the offseason? Obviously, this is actually a bad time to ask the question, given that it is the offseason, and the ones who are going to be reading the question and responding to it are going to be the ones who do stay engaged.
But there are those who come and go in and out of the offseason, and even from year to year, often depending on how the Steelers might have done the year before, whether there is reason for optimism for the upcoming season, or if there are important events or decisions to be made during that time period.
To what degree do you keep your ear to the ground during the quiet hours of the offseason, with this time prior to the Combine serving as one of the peak moments? We can really just look at the traffic numbers and how much they bit to determine how different the engagement levels are during the season and during the dead periods, but I still want to pose the question to our general readership about how consistently or inconsistently they stay tuned.
