NFL schedule reveal day is finally upon us. No more speculation about when teams will play each other during the 2024 season, no more wondering how the schedule will look, all of that.
But for now, there remains some speculation and anticipation.
For NFL Network’s Bucky Brooks, that anticipation surrounds the announcement of the matchup set this season for Empower Field at Mile High in Denver between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Denver Broncos due to one key storyline: the return of Russell Wilson to take on Sean Payton.
“Russell Wilson had always been kinda like the apple of everyone’s eye prior to going to Denver. And then everything turned for him when he got Denver,” Brooks said of the anticipated Broncos-Steelers matchup, according to video via NFL.com. “People didn’t like the personality. Sean Payton seemed to have issues with him. We see him undress[ed] unmercifully. So now, Russell Wilson finds his way to the dark side, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“And we know Mike Tomlin loves to motivate his players, but he loves to kind of take them in and it’s look Steelers versus everybody for Russell Wilson to have an opportunity to kind of make it right against the Denver Broncos. Yeah, that’s a tasty matchup when it comes to a revenge game.”
It’s one that’s been written about and talked about quite a bit, considering how unceremoniously Wilson’s time in Denver ended along with the Broncos taking a more than $80 million dead cap hit to have him play elsewhere.
But that doesn’t make it any less juicy or anticipated.
Ideally, the NFL would have slotted the matchup in primetime to open the season, whether that was on Sunday Night Football or Monday Night Football, much like they did for Wilson’s return to Seattle in Week 1 of the 2022 season. But that didn’t happen as reports indicate that the Steelers will open on the road against the Atlanta Falcons, setting up an Arthur Smith revenge game against the Falcons as the new offensive coordinator of the Steelers.
So, with the Week 1 matchup seemingly out of discussion, it will be very interesting to see where the Steelers-Broncos matchup slots in on the schedule from Pittsburgh’s perspective.
For Russell Wilson’s sake, hopefully it’s relatively early in the season so he can get it over with and close that chapter of his career. It’ll be a tough week for him going back to Denver where fans aren’t thrilled with him and the coach on the other side of the field has torn him down quite a bit.
He seems to be in a better situation now under Tomlin with a better team around him in general. Hopefully Wilson has more success than he did in Denver and can ride into the Mile High City and take down his former team in convincing fashion to emphatically slam the door on that chapter and storyline of his career.
