What do you do during a rain delay on Sunday night football? Not a whole lot. By this point, the Pittsburgh Steelers are used to weather delays and schedule shifts. Not that it made things any better or eventful for the nearly 90-minute wait ahead of Sunday’s game against the Dallas Cowboys.
“I start warming up, but like 6 o’clock, like stretching, rolling out whatever, seeing the chiropractor, whatever guys need to do to get ready,” Kuntz said on the latest episode of his podcast. “Do a little warmup in the locker room. Essentially, you’re like working from 6 o’clock, the game didn’t kick off till 9:45. Now we’re out there, we’re warming up at 6:50. We get the whole through the whole warmup and you could kind of see the overcast coming in. It got dark quick.”
A line of severe weather pushed back the start of Sunday night’s game from 8:20 to 9:45. NFL rules mandate a half-hour waiting period after the latest lightning strike. On top of that, a 20-minute warmup period to get loose again. It made for the latest kickoff in franchise history, a third quarter that didn’t end until midnight, and a conclusion that didn’t occur until 1 AM/EST.
In the pre-game stalling, even the NBC broadcast had to figure out a slant, once reporting on the sandwich cart that was rolling into the locker room. Eat your heart out, Tom Brokaw.
Waiting it out in the locker room made Pittsburgh an anxious bunch.
“We’re like five minutes until we’re ready to head back out for the coin toss and everything. Our guy comes in, ‘Hey, it’s gonna be at least 30 minutes. So guys are taking off their cleats…Honestly, the delays suck. You get warmed up, you’re ready to go. You’re anxious. You have the butterflies and then they tell you 30 minutes and they come back in again. ‘It’s gonna be another 30 minutes.'”
Football players are creatures of habit and routine. Any disruption is challenging. And all that did was screw up the schedule on the other side. Players get less sleep, coaches can’t start their Week 6 study as quickly, the whole process is delayed alongside kickoff. It makes for a tough Monday, especially off a heart-breaking loss.
Though it’s the latest game, it’s hardly the only schedule change the team has had to deal with. Last year, the Steelers played technically their longest game in history when two weather delays lengthened their loss to the Arizona Cardinals, a miserable game in sport and in weather. Kickoff to triple zeros took nearly five hours. Later that year, their Wild Card game against the Buffalo Bills would be pushed back one day due to a blizzard, the Steelers travelling in relatively dangerous conditions.
And in 2020, the Steelers had several games pushed around due to COVID outbreaks in other locker rooms. It altered and essentially forfeited their bye week and saw them play on a Wednesday afternoon one week.
The Steelers were battle-tested, but so was Dallas. The Cowboys weren’t bothered by the road trip, the rain, or the delay. And it made for a happier red eye back home.
