Mike Tomlin has a saying when it comes to his football team and seeking comfort. The 2024 schedule was released on Wednesday evening, and the Steelers will have plenty of opportunities for discomfort in the 2024 season.
“Coach Tomlin has a saying, I try to make things as uncomfortable as possible. Guess what my dog? You ain’t gotta try hard this year because the NFL did it for you,” Clark said in a clip from ESPN’s Get Up on Thursday morning. “Who made this schedule? What dude from Cleveland all of a sudden got a job in the league office? To think that you have to play the Ravens twice, the Bengals, the Cleveland Browns, and then the Eagles and the Chiefs…the end of the season is where we’ve seen the Steelers find ways to compete.”
If the Steelers once again find themselves in a do-or-die situation at the end of the season like they often are, it will be tough sledding to finish on a high note with the schedule they have been given. All of their final eight opponents have projected win totals over .500 and six of them are divisional opponents. The Steelers could enter Week 11 with a 7-3 record, and it still may not be enough to weather the challenges of the final half of the season.
They will have the Baltimore Ravens in Week 11 followed by a short week with Thursday Night Football against the Cleveland Browns. A few weeks later, they will have the Ravens again to kick off another short week before they face the reigning Super Bowl-champion Kansas City Chiefs on Christmas Day. I am not sure we have ever seen a schedule quite like this before for the Steelers. Certainly not with the divisional matchups all being from Week 11 and on.
The schedule is going to apply a lot of pressure to the revamped offense to perform well early in the season. The Steelers cannot afford growing pains that result in a 4-4 (or similar) record entering their Week 9 bye week. A new offensive coordinator, new offensive linemen, new wide receivers, and new quarterbacks will need to come out of the gate performing at a high level to give the team as much of a buffer as possible entering the final stretch.
If they can’t we may be having a lot of the same conversations in December in 2024 as we were in 2023.
“This is a very difficult thing for Coach Tomlin. And this could be a conversation after the season if he continues coaching them,” Clark said of the difficult season aligning with a make-or-break season for Tomlin. “When you think about this team, is Omar Khan and Mike Tomlin going to have to have a conversation when the season ends if they aren’t a playoff team?”
Clark also talked up Tomlin and said it is unlikely the team fires him. But the seat is going to be very hot if the Steelers fail to even qualify for the playoffs after the moves they made this offseason, all with the urgency of winning a playoff game at the forefront of their minds.
