The Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys were scheduled to play their Sunday Night Football game with an 8:20 PM/ET kickoff time, but weather delays have had America in a holding pattern for the highly anticipated matchup. According to the broadcast on NBC, the game is scheduled to resume at 9:45 PM/ET.
They wait 30 minutes after each lightning strike in the area and it kept happening, which caused further delays. The worst part of the storm seems to be passing now.
That is a delay of nearly an hour and a half. These primetime games normally end pretty late for the east coast audience to begin with, so this should push the game beyond midnight for a decent portion of the audience.
This type of delay also means the players will likely need to do some light warmups again. They had warmed up prior to the initial delay, but they have been stuck in the locker rooms for the last couple hours. The television broadcast showed some sandwiches being delivered to the locker rooms at one point.
Though the lightning has passed, the weather is not clear. There will be a ton of rain and a slick playing field for this game. That often serves as a great equalizer or a wild card that both teams have to deal with.
Expect the Steelers to run the ball a lot with the wind and the rain, which they were already likely to do. The Cowboys have had large issues stopping the run, and that should be even worse with Micah Parsons, DeMarcus Lawrence, and others out of the lineup.
On the other end of things, the Cowboys haven’t been very effective running the ball. If the weather limits their aerial attack from Dak Prescott to CeeDee Lamb, that could be advantageous for the Steelers.
