Steelers Now
The Pittsburgh Steelers got their schedule for the 2025 season on Wednesday, and while the identities of the team’s 14 opponents over 17 games had been known since the end of the 2024 season, the order of operations was revealed with the league’s annual schedule release.
We saw last year how the schedule can impact things, with the Steelers struggling amid the NFL’s most difficult stretch run in recent memory, facing three Super Bowl contenders — the Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles — in an 11-game stretch.
So with he release of this year’s schedule, is there another such touch stretch awaiting the Steelers or have the schedule-makers been kinder this year, and what other pertinent takeaways are there from the announcement?
Let’s dive in:
While it seems very likely that Aaron Rodgers will eventually sign with the Steelers, this schedule is not the way it would have looked if the lighting rod of a quarterback was securely signed in Pittsburgh.
His revenge game against the New York Jets, while in Week 1, is in a Sunday 1 p.m. window, and the Steelers have just four prime time games instead of six, they don’t play on a holiday. This schedule has less national attention built into it than the Steelers usually get — not the significant increase we should have expected with Rodgers in the fold.
Last year, the Steelers played two 4:25 p.m. national games, four traditional prime time games, two standalone Saturday games, and a standalone Christmas Day game. That’s nine times last year the Steelers played and were the only game on TV. This year, there’s only six of those built into the schedule.
So while the game against the Packers being one of the prime time games is probably a nod to the possibility of it being a Rodgers-Packers showdown, the Steelers overall schedule is that of a 10-7 team with an unsettled and uninteresting quarterback situation, not one with Rodgers.
The Steelers don’t have too any outright bad games on their schedule. They play the Cleveland Browns twice, but the rivalry makes those games emotional affairs, no matter the records of the teams involved. The Jets being the season opener pretty well rules that out as a trap game.
But the one other team that drafted inside No. 10 in the 2025 NFL Draft on the schedule is the New England Patriots, and their placement in the schedule has the look of a nasty trap game.
After starting on the road, the Steelers have their home opener in Week 2 against the Seattle Seahawks. Week 4 is their long-awaited trip to Ireland to face the Vikings. In between, a trip to New England to face a lowly Patriots team.
That looks like a game the Steelers should dominate, but that also makes it an easy opponent to overlook.
The Steelers will play...
