The Pittsburgh Steelers have an absolute gauntlet of a schedule to end the 2024 season. In the last eight weeks, the team will have to play all six divisional opponents, as well as the Philadelphia Eagles and the back-to-back Super Bowl champions, the Kansas City Chiefs. Three of those eight weeks will be short weeks as well. They will have a Thursday Night Football match against the Cleveland Browns, as well as a Wednesday game against the Chiefs, which will be on Christmas day.
Mike North, one of the schedule makers, previously claimed that there was no intention to make the Steelers wait until Week 11 before they played a divisional game. It all happened on accident, and "they'll take a look at [it] in the future." The schedule makers do use an AI model to make the schedule, and we all know that AI is far from perfect.
The whole gauntlet seemingly appears to be planned out. As more and more information comes out, there are more reasons as to why the schedule makers would want to make the back half of the schedule as hard as possible for the Steelers.
Steelers Get Screwed By "Must-See TV"
The NFL announced that the entire AFC North will be featured on HBO's Hard Knocks. While the show is most famous for focusing on training camp, this edition will take place during the month of December. The world will get to see how much of a bloodbath the division truly is, and how much winning each divisional game matters to all four teams.
What a coincidence, right? It just so happens that the show will occur in the middle of the gauntlet. The Steelers will play all three divisional opponents during the month of December, the Eagles, and the aforementioned Christmas game against the Chiefs. Who wouldn't want to watch how a team traverses a slate a games like that?
Not only are the Steelers being used for Hard Knocks, but that Christmas game will be exclusively streamed on Netflix, meaning that anyone who wants to watch the game will have to buy a subscription to the site. The NFL and Peacock were successful in milking money out of the Swifties during the postseason, so why not do it again with Netflix? With that, combined with Hard Knocks, the Steelers were the perfect fit to face off against Kansas City on 12/15.
The Steelers' schedule is challenging anyways, but the team would likely much rather have the games spread out, as opposed to having one long stretch. Unfortunately, money talks, and the NFL will do anything to make a few extra bucks. Due to the chase for the almighty dollar, the Steelers must be tortured for the whole world to see.
Even with this nightmare scenario, if history repeats itself, the organization will still likely find a way to win at least nine games. They usually perform very well against their division. They went 5-1 against the AFC North last year, and that's with every single team in the division having a winning record. The Steelers will prevail, whether the NFL wants them to or not.
