The 2025 NFL schedules have been released across the league, and Pittsburgh Steelers team president Art Rooney II has appeared in his annual video to mark the occasion via Steelers.com. He gave his general reaction to the schedule as well as the placement of the Week 5 bye following the team’s international game.
Rooney called the NFL’s first-ever regular season game in Ireland between the Steelers and the Minnesota Vikings the “headline” of the schedule. He explained what else he initially looks for when the schedule is first released.
“I just look to see where the night games are and the far trips,” Rooney said. “It fell alright. I think the only complaint I have is a night game on the West Coast is always something I prefer to avoid, and we got one of those this year, so these things happen.”
Other than Ireland, the Steelers will be making their longest road trip of the season to Los Angeles in Week 10 for Sunday Night Football. The Steelers don’t have the greatest track record of success when it comes to West Coast games in general throughout Mike Tomlin’s tenure as the head coach.
They have fared better in recent years, but they have been 6-7 overall on the West Coast since 2007.
The position of the bye week is always a key aspect of the schedule. The Steelers’ bye will come in Week 5 after their game in Ireland. On one hand, that makes sense, but it sets them up for a 13-game slog through the rest of the schedule with no real break other than the mini bye after Thursday Night Football in Week 7. And even that is pretty early on in the season.
“Let’s say this, we didn’t ask for the bye after the Ireland game,” Rooney said via Bob Labriola of Steelers.com. “The league has, in the past, kind of tended to try to give teams their bye following an International Game. I don’t think that’s the rule anymore, but you know it’s not a bad way to do it. It is a long trip, and so it doesn’t hurt to have the bye coming after that.”
The New York Jets and the Jacksonville Jaguars didn’t have bye weeks after their international games last season, so it isn’t a given that the league schedules things that way. In the Steelers’ case, they did.
Rooney said his preference has always been for the bye week to come later in the season, but admits it’s not a bad way to structure things coming off international travel.
The bye week was perfectly placed in 2024 at Week 9 to split the season into two even parts. They dealt with a similarly early bye week in 2023 during Week 6. The COVID-19 season in 2020 had a Week 4 bye due to a game postponement, but the last time they had a bye that early was 2012.
Players probably won’t love the placement of the bye week, but there are always unique challenges to the schedule that the team has to deal with.
