By virtue of the NFL force-feeding us Christmas Day games, the Mike Tomlin’s Pittsburgh Steelers will play on five days of the week during the 2024 season. In addition to Monday and Thursday Night Football contests, they will also play on Wednesday and Saturday.
With Christmas falling on Wednesday this year, the Steelers have no choice. And the NFL needs to give teams playing on Wednesdays extra time, so Tomlin’s team plays on Saturday the week before. Accordingly, you get a scheduled game for every day of the week short of Tuesday and Friday.
In addition to four primetime games, the Steelers also play four late-afternoon games. That’s more than half of their schedule either later than a 1 PM kickoff or on an uncommon day. The Steelers only play eight Sunday early-afternoon games this year, pending the starting time for the finale. With all of the variability built into their schedule, Steelers president Art Rooney II is thankful to have an experienced head coach in Mike Tomlin.
“Mike does a good job of getting guys ready”, he said regarding Tomlin’s influence on the Steelers under unusual circumstances. “There are no excuses in terms of what day of the week you’re playing. He doesn’t allow for that, or the time of the day. You just have to be ready to go when the time comes”.
To his credit, Tomlin has a generally favorable record in primetime. He also happens to be 2-0 on Christmas. He had the Steelers beating the Baltimore Ravens at 3:40 PM on a Wednesday back in 2020, a game rescheduled multiple times due to COVID-19.
The Steelers are only scheduled for four non-Sunday games this season, pending the finale, which could end up on Saturday. Last season, they went 4-1 in five non-Sunday games during the regular season, including multiple Saturday wins.
“You never know, you can’t take anything for granted. But Coach usually has the team prepared for primetime”, Rooney told Missi Matthews during an interview for the Steelers’ website, “and I know our fans will be excited about the Cowboys coming into town, and some of those New York teams, so those will be exciting nights”.
Of course, Steelers fans love to claim that Tomlin never has his team prepared. They love to distort the track record of team claims indicating a lack of preparedness. They also prefer to ignore the times that opponents claim the Steelers outcoached them. Both Todd Bowles and Sean McDermott find themselves on that list, among numerous others.
Sometimes things just don’t go the way that they’re supposed to go without a grand conspiracy behind it. On the whole, barring some spectacular postseason failures, Tomlin’s Steelers play well and competitively. They’ve had more blowout losses in recent years, admittedly, during adjustment periods.
But Art Rooney II is still taking Mike Tomlin to lead his Steelers team every day, and perhaps twice on Sundays, if the NFL has its way. They already have Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
