Prepping for Christmas Eve game, Steelers have history of playing on holidays

’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the … stadium?

Acrisure Stadium will host the NFL’s first true Christmas Eve night game (8:15 p.m. scheduled kickoff) in its history this Saturday when the Pittsburgh Steelers host the Las Vegas Raiders.

When Christmas Eve has fallen on a Sunday or a Saturday, the league often has scheduled a full or near-full slate of afternoon games. And in recent decades on a couple of occasions, a 5 p.m. PT game has been played on Christmas Eve from a west coast city.

But Saturday’s game is the first in which kids across the host city will be on the lookout for Santa flying overhead while the scoreboard says it’s still the fourth quarter.

“It’s part of the job description,” Steelers center Mason Cole said, “that we are gonna work (nontraditional days).”

Cole, coincidentally, has a son who will turn 2 on Saturday. Many professional athletes do not have kids, or the ones they do have might be too young to understand Christmas.

Left guard Kevin Dotson is among those who, as a 26-year-old, remains childless.

“I wasn’t gonna be doing anything anyway,” Dotson said of Christmas Eve, “so I don’t mind playing. We get Sunday off, I kind of like that.”

A few years back, the Steelers were not off on consecutive Christmas Days. After going more than eight decades without a Dec. 25 game, the Steelers played on Christmas Day 2016 and 2017, winning at home against the Baltimore Ravens in the former and beating the Houston Texans on the road in the latter.

In 2016, the Steelers were holiday darlings: They also played on Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. The Nov. 24, 2016, game at the Indianapolis Colts was their eighth Thanksgiving game (the scheduled 2020 meeting with the Baltimore Ravens was postponed because of a covid-19 outbreak).

After the #Steelers game on Thanksgiving in 1998, Jerome Bettis told reporters: “I did not say ‘heads-tails. … That’s a bold-faced lie.” https://t.co/Z6AWNk8sBN

— Tribune-ReviewSports (@TribSports) November 29, 2020

Jan. 1 games are a regular part of the NFL calendar when the first day of the year falls on a Sunday. The league has played regular-season games on that weekend over the past two-plus decades. Next weekend, the Steelers are scheduled to play in Baltimore on New Year’s Day.

Saturday is the Steelers’ second Christmas Eve game in the 16-year Mike Tomlin tenure. Over their history, the Steelers are 4-4 in Dec. 24 games, including 1-1 at home.

“I get to see (my son) a little bit in the morning (on Christmas Eve),” Cole said, smiling.

“Luckily he’s only 2 so he won’t even know (dad will be gone). Hopefully, I make enough money and get out of this place and can spend a lot of birthdays with him going forward.”

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