Behind the Steel Curtain
It’s finally here. The NFL regular season kicks off tomorrow night, and the Steelers will be on TV not long after on Sunday afternoon.
The preseason was cool, but September football is the real thing. The next few weeks won’t determine any postseason standings, but they’ll give us our first real look at the teams we’ve been speculating about all summer.
As a result, it’s the last gasp of preseason predictions season, and Read & React has a full slate ahead of the NFL’s Week 1 slate. We’ll be repeating what we did last year: looking at some Steelers and AFC North superlatives before our schedules are consumed by NFL football this weekend.
But first, we’ll be following up on some Cam Heyward contract drama, which is coincidentally also what our first question of R&R was a year ago:
RB: Heyward answered with a vague “we’ll see” regarding his status for Sunday’s game, but Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin seemed a lot more confident in his Tuesday press conference that the veteran defender would be in the lineup against the Jets.
To me, this feels like Heyward is trying to hold onto any leverage he can with the Steelers, but he will almost certainly be on the field Sunday afternoon. At 36 years old and still trying to make a push for his first career Super Bowl ring, it doesn’t make much sense for Heyward to purposefully miss any part of the season.
And that’s not even getting into how the fan-favorite defender could tarnish his legacy in Pittsburgh.
Relative to how well he played last year, Heyward has a very strong case to want a raise from the Steelers. But sitting out the season opener feels like a step too far, and Heyward probably knows that as well.
If anything, I expect both sides to come to a last-minute agreement ahead of the season opener once again.
RP: I’m not going to pretend to know what’s in Cam Heyward’s heart, but working off of 14 years’ worth of reputation, I have to agree with Ryland. It would be surprising if Heyward is not out on the field on Sunday.
This summer’s Heyward contract saga remains perplexing. Last year, when Heyward signed his extension, we highlighted that the Steelers essentially agreed to give Heyward an advance by converting money from 2025 into a signing bonus to be paid out in 2024. The move had little risk for the team as it made Heyward easily cuttable in the event his injury-plagued 2023 season carried over into 2024. The added years to his contract were not for the benefit of Heyward, but rather to spread out the cap hit if Heyward had been cut this offseason.
Some of this drama is on Heyward for agreeing to...
