The Pittsburgh Steelers are known as a tough, gritty football team, playing in games that are absolute knock-down, drag-out brawls, usually against the other AFC North teams. However, this year might see a few other games reach that level of physicality, with some new faces on the Steelers returning to play their old teams. Luckily for the Steelers, or unluckily if you have a different point of view, they’ll be able to get the two biggest “revenge games” out of the way early. Pittsburgh plays the Atlanta Falcons, Arthur Smith’s former team, to open the season, then faces the Denver Broncos, Russell Wilson’s former team, the following week.
It seems like the Falcons don’t have much bad blood when it comes to Smith, but the Broncos, or more specifically head coach Sean Payton, almost definitely have their game against Wilson circled. Chris Simms, a former NFL quarterback and current analyst for NBC, spoke recently on Pro Football Talk about how Payton will refuse to lose this game.
”Never easy playing in Denver. You know Sean Payton’s gonna want to make a point there and go, ‘Wait, I’m not gonna let the guy that I wasted all this salary cap on, and moved on from, and had to waste all this time talking about it, and blah blah blah, I don’t want him to come in here and win that game.’ I know Sean Payton. He’s chippy. He’s certainly not gonna want that. Definitely not.”
Simms certainly seems to think there’s some unresolved issues between Wilson and Payton, and in the game of football, that usually gets worked out on the field. Payton wasn’t actually with the Broncos when they traded for and paid Wilson, but he is dealing with the ramifications of that move, so even if there are no personal issues between the two, Wilson’s contract has still left Payton with one hand tied behind his back.
Wilson will also surely be motivated to go into Denver and leave with a win, as his time there has left a stain on his legacy as a player. Despite actually playing decent football last year, he still got benched down the stretch last year by Payton. For a quarterback who has won a Super Bowl, Wilson won’t want that to be the last memory the NFL has of him. The Steelers should be about as healthy as they can be going into Week 2, so hopefully the team is at full strength to give Wilson the best chance to prove his former team wrong. Either way, that game will surely be a heated and competitive affair, completely due to a situation the Steelers had nothing to do with.
