Art Rooney II on Steelers’ difficult 2024 schedule: ‘Not exactly how I would have drawn it up’

About that new schedule Steelers fans. The NFL announced all the games and locations Wednesday night. But after the sheer excitement of it all, reality set in. This slate is backloaded for the end of the season.

It’s hard.

In fact, based on how teams finished last season, the Steelers face the third toughest strength of schedule behind only Cleveland and Baltimore. (We’re sensing an AFC North theme). Of course, the strength of schedule will change once teams actually start playing games this fall.

Maybe Steelers president Art Rooney II summarized it the best.

“It’s probably not exactly how I would have drawn it up, but we’ve got to do the best we can,” Rooney said. “On the positive side, we’ve got some high-profile, marquee games with the Cowboys and the Chiefs on Christmas Day, a couple of other primetime games. We’ll be playing in front of a big audience most of the time, which is a good thing. A lot of the division games are at the end of the schedule, so it will be an interesting stretch there toward the end.”

The Steelers open play on the road against the Falcons. They’ll be the first team to face Kirk Cousins wearing an Atlanta uniform. And it’ll likely be a battle between two of the NFL’s most seasoned quarterbacks, with Russell Wilson the likely starter for Pittsburgh. Cousins and Wilson are both 35. Meanwhile, Arthur Smith, the Steelers new offensive coordinator, meets his old team. He was head coach of the Falcons for three seasons.

Then, Pittsburgh travels to Denver. It’ll be some weird nostalgia for Wilson. After all, his career seemingly fell apart while he was quarterback for the Broncos. It led him to Pittsburgh.