The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2024 season schedule was officially released Wednesday night. It’s a schedule frontloaded with storylines and backloaded with the AFC North. The end of the season could be the most brutal stretch the team has seen if its opponents are healthy.
However, one of the biggest storylines for the Steelers comes in Week 1 when they travel to Atlanta to take on the Falcons. New Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith’s first game running the offense comes against the team he coached for the last three seasons and fired him.
“Week 1, let’s face it, Pittsburgh going to Atlanta, it’s a great game,” NFL analyst Brian Baldinger said on The Best Football Show schedule release live reaction show Thursday morning. “I do the national game of the week on national radio. I have a feeling I’m gonna be in, I don’t know the schedule yet, but I have a feeling I’m gonna be in Atlanta… That’s gonna be a phenomenal game. I mean, you get Russell Wilson leading the Steelers going into Atlanta where Kirk Cousins just got a hundred guaranteed million dollars and they drafted Michael Penix Jr.”
It’s a heck of a way to kick off the season for the new-look Steelers offense. Baldinger thinks Wilson will be leading the Steelers’ offense in Week 1. We know he’s going to have the first crack at starter reps this summer. Regardless of whether it’s Wilson and Justin Fields, whoever is under center for the Steelers in Atlanta will want to prove that they are a capable starter in this league. Neither quarterback finished with their previous teams under the greatest of circumstances and will want to prove those teams wrong.
And so will the guy calling plays for whoever is the starting quarterback. Smith drew a lot of criticism for how the Falcons fared under him. They finished 7-10 all three seasons he was the head coach and never developed a quality passing game. People complained that he never utilized TE Kyle Pitts properly despite spending the fourth overall pick on him.
Smith wants to prove the naysayers wrong, and what better place to start than in Mercedes-Benz Stadium where he called home for three seasons? Baldinger predicts it won’t be a hostile crowd for Smith and his offense, either.
“The Terrible Towels are coming,” Baldinger said. “Whatever Arthur Blank, the owner of the Falcons, decides to try and do, I don’t think he can keep the Terrible Towels out of Atlanta. That team travels as well as any team in the league, and they may very well take over Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. We’ll see, but that’s gonna be a marquee matchup.”
With an absolutely brutal end of the season, the Steelers need to start 2024 on the right foot. A good offensive performance in Atlanta would be a big shot in the arm for Smith and his offense as well as the team as a whole.
