From Weeks 10 through 18, the Pittsburgh Steelers are staring down an absolute gauntlet of a final stretch in the 2024 season.
All six matchups in the AFC North fall in those nine weeks, while matchups with the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the powerful Philadelphia Eagles are also mixed in there. Turns out, it was part of the plan for the NFL as the AFC North is featured on HBO’s in-season “Hard Knocks” this fall.
For former Steelers’ offensive lineman and current radio color analyst Craig Wolfley, that final stretch is a real problem, something that needs to be addressed moving forward. However, the Steelers can do nothing about it now, so from Wolfley’s perspective, it’s all about mind over matter and staying healthy.
“What bothered me was that they moved all the division games back towards December. That’s a problem. That’s the big problem for me because in December when you start playing three games in 11 days, as the great Alan Faneca said, you can barely walk in December,” Wolfley said of the gauntlet in the schedule during an appearance on the Irish Steelers Podcast. “Normally, getting up, besides playing three games in 11 days, that’s gonna be a challenge right there.
“I think more than anything, it’s the gauntlet the NFL schedule makers have thrown the Steelers way. That’s gonna create some issues. But you know what, here’s the thing. It’s mind over matter. If you don’t mind. It don’t matter, baby.”
It’s a nice catchphrase, one that could certainly help the Steelers mentally in that final gauntlet of games. But what it really comes down to in that stretch for the Steelers, like every other team in the NFL in November, December, and early January, is health.
That could be a difficult thing to have for the Black and Gold in that stretch with six AFC North games, part of a “double chinstrap” division as Wolfley says.
Those matchups are always street fights, ones where the records get thrown out the window, along with the excuses. The games are always close and physically demanding. Having them all packed together so tightly could be very difficult physically for not only the Steelers but the entire division as a whole.
It might come down to the last man standing.
“Again, much of it is so much how healthy are you as you make a stretch run. That’s the problem, trying to stay healthy throughout the season,” Wolfley said, with health being the most important thing late in the year. “You can’t. You simply can’t work out and train to prevent injury. Your training will prevent injury, but you cannot prevent all injury situations. So you never know when the injury bug catches you. The days when people said, ‘Well, he wasn’t in shape, and he got injured,’ those days are over. It’s a highly volatile game. So staying healthy is mandate number one.
“You’ve got to stay healthy. As the late, great, my brother Tunch Ilkin always used to say, the NFL landscape changes, not just monthly, but weekly, depending on who’s able to suit up and who’s still at a high level performance-wise, ability-wise. So that’s gonna be a big huge thing in my mind.”
Ultimately, it will come down to health and availability late in the season. It’s going to be incredibly difficult to come out of that stretch healthy. In fact, it seems safe to say it’ll be impossible. Guys will have to play through some bumps and bruises and maybe even more serious ailments down the stretch to help give their teams a chance at winning games and potentially winning the AFC North.
It’s just a shame the NFL set this up this way. It’s not healthy for the players, and it definitely isn’t safe. It’ll put a lot of eyeballs on the division and the game itself, though, which seems to be all that largely matters in the grand scheme of things to the bottom line.
