The Pittsburgh Steelers and their fans officially know the dates and times for each game on their schedule for the 2024 season, and as with every other team, owner Art Rooney II has his quibbles with the lot they have been dealt by the schedule makers.
Notably, the Steelers will be playing on every day of the week this season except for Tuesday and Friday. They are one of four teams slated to play in a Wednesday doubleheader for Christmas, preceded by a Saturday game. Naturally, they will also play on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday Night Football.
“It’s probably not exactly how I would have drawn it up, but we’ve got to do the best we can”, Rooney said of the schedule, via the team’s website. “On the positive side, we’ve got some high-profile, marquee games with the Cowboys and the Chiefs on Christmas Day, a couple of other primetime games. We’ll be playing in front of a big audience most of the time, which is a good thing. A lot of the division games are at the end of the schedule, so it will be an interesting stretch there toward the end”.
As it stands, Rooney’s team is scheduled to play four primetime games, including two on Sunday Night Football. They host the Dallas Cowboys in Week 5 and the New York Jets two weeks later. In between, they have a road evening game against the Las Vegas Raiders. After playing the Jets, they host the New York Giants on Monday night. Their Thursday game sees them visit the Cleveland Browns in Week 12.
The Steelers end the season with all six AFC North games in the final eight weeks of the season. That’s an interesting makeup, given how much ground they can gain or lose down the back nine. It’s impossible to predict how attrition may impact the division race by then. By that time last season, the AFC North was down two starting quarterbacks and an All-Pro running back, among others.
Rooney acknowledges he would have drawn up the Steelers’ schedule differently, but every owner is bound to say that every year. You can’t give 32 teams the schedule that they want, so nobody will, because you have to find compromises.
On the whole, there’s nothing outwardly horrible about the Steelers’ schedule, beyond the Christmas Day game, in my opinion. The fact that they have to play on a short week at odd times is a significant component of that.
But at the end of the day, we’ve known who the Steelers play and where since the regular season ended. All we’re finding out tonight is when they will play those games. We don’t know what the team or its opponents will look like by then.
Perhaps the most noteworthy observation is the fact that the Steelers will have plenty of time to build and hone their identity before they have to worry about divisional play. At the same time, their opponents will have plenty of tape to observe, so they won’t find many surprises.
