Postponements, early bye weeks haven’t had negative effect on Steelers

Parking lots and highways turned into ice rinks and speedskating tracks on a January weekend almost four years ago in America’s Heartland.

Eleven years earlier, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ night-before-game meetings were conducted by flashlight at a blacked-out hotel near Miami as wind gusts bent palm trees outside.

Although Hurricane Jeanne in September 2004 and a Kansas City ice storm in January 2017 pushed back the kickoff time of scheduled Steelers games, neither could do what the coronavirus pandemic did this week. Sunday’s scheduled Steelers-Tennessee Titans game was postponed until Oct. 25.

One day after the NFL postponed the #Steelers game at Tennessee until later in the season, 2 more #Titans players tested positive for covid-19, ESPN reported Friday morning.https://t.co/o7MtQdz5Ux

— Tribune-ReviewSports (@TribSports) October 2, 2020

It’s not the first time the Steelers were forced to deal with a delay and modification to their schedule. They’ve been affected by external factors sometimes tragic or scary, other times just an inconvenience. But in regards to on-field performance, the franchise emerged largely unaffected and often looking better off for their trouble.

These Steelers are subjected to an unscheduled bye week that could halt the momentum of a 3-0 start, force them to play 13 consecutive weeks and endure a brutal stretch of three consecutive road games against strong teams.

“I think we’re all understanding of the situation,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said. “It’s not a lack of understanding.”

The postponement of a Steelers game during the divisional round of the playoffs after the 2016 season lasted a little more than seven hours. A 1 p.m. kickoff against the Kansas City Chiefs was bumped to 8:20 p.m. because of a winter storm. The Steelers caught their flight out of Pittsburgh earlier than usual, too, but they still beat the Chiefs, 18-16, to advance to their 16^th AFC championship game.

“We can’t let weather conditions (affect) how we play,” Steelers receiver Antonio Brown said at the time.

Many Steelers said similar things Sept. 26, 2004, the day after being hunkered down in South Florida as Hurricane Jeanne made landfall. The game against the Miami Dolphins was moved from an afternoon start to prime time.

It was Ben Roethlisberger’s first career start.

“It was the rainiest day that I’ve ever experienced,” Roethlisberger said during a segment on his 93.7 FM radio show years later. “They had the dirt, the baseball infield was in there, so that was a muddy mess.”

The Steelers won ugly in the slop, 13-3. It started a 15-game winning streak that carried through the divisional round of the playoffs.

Three years before the Miami game, the Steelers were 0-1 in 2001 and coming off three consecutive nonplayoff seasons. The NFL postponed its Week 2 schedule after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and rescheduled those games for a weekend tacked on to the end of the season.

The Steelers won five straight after play resumed and finished that season as the AFC’s No. 1 seed at 13-3.

. @MarkMaddenX — The postponement of the #Steelers game at Tennessee is much ado about nothing.https://t.co/cs2Xx6iTkR

— Tribune-ReviewSports (@TribSports) October 2, 2020

Still, when Tomlin called the current disruption “a letdown,” there is merit in believing the Steelers’ season is adversely being affected by the covid-19 cases in the Titans’ organization.

The rescheduling involves an unenviable sequence that leads the Steelers to playing games at Tennessee, Baltimore and Dallas in consecutive weeks.

Additionally, there is angst about the bye week coming so early they could be forced to play games every weekend into January.

A look into team history shows that hasn’t been a detriment. Since the NFL added bye weeks in 1990, the Steelers have been off during Week 4 four times and earlier than that on another three occasions.

Of those seven seasons, none ended with a losing record, four resulted in playoff berths, two with an AFC championship game appearance and one (2005) a Super Bowl victory. In two of the three nonplayoff seasons with early byes, the Steelers played well down the stretch, winning eight of their final 12 in 2000 and six of their final eight in 2006.

During the season of their most recent Super Bowl trip (2010), the Steelers had a Week 5 bye. They won six of their final seven, again suggesting an early-season idle week that forced a long stretch of games did not lead to fatigue.

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