For the Pittsburgh Steelers, they want to see the NFL trade deadline moved back. According to a new rule proposal issued by the team, the league’s trade deadline would shift to the Tuesday following the Week Nine slate of games instead of Week Eight.
The Steelers’ proposal was noted Wednesday evening ahead of the owners’ meetings later this month.
The push of a later trade deadline hasn’t just been floated by Pittsburgh. The Cleveland Browns have also publicly pushed for the deadline to be moved back. Citing a regular season that now lasts an additional game and more time for teams to decide whether they’re buyers or sellers, the idea has gained momentum this offseason.
“We want to retroactively correct the fact that the trade deadline never moved when the season expanded to 17 games,” GM Andrew Berry said at the NFL Combine, via CBS Sports’ John Breech. “If, at some point in the future, the regular season expands to 18 games, we wanted to be proactive in terms of the positioning for the trade deadline.”
However, Berry pushed for the league to push the trade deadline to the Tuesday after Week Ten in anticipation of a future 18-game schedule. The Steelers’ proposal would only push the deadline back one week to after Week Nine. The Steelers have yet to publicly comment on the idea.
Cleveland, along with several other teams, submitted proposals to push the trade deadline to past Week Ten. Pittsburgh was the only team to propose moving it to after Week Nine.
Detractors of the idea cite concerns over teams becoming non-competitive. In theory, the longer a league waits until the trade deadline, the more time teams have to decide whether or not they want to tank a season. And those teams clearly out of the playoff picture may sell off more assets than they otherwise would, making them less competitive over the final few weeks of the season.
Still, the expansion to seven playoff teams per conference coupled with a desire to make the NFL trade deadline in line with other sports that have theirs later in the calendar, should ease concerns over teams holding a fire sale. We’ll see if the Steelers’ proposal pushes through when it’s addressed and voted on later this offseason. The NFL’s annual league meeting will take place March 24-27 in Orlando, Florida.
On the field, there were four proposals issued ahead of the 2024 season. Most notably, the Indianapolis Colts propose the ability for any penalty to be challenged and reviewed inside the two-minute warning.
