May 17, 2025 5 min read

By Dale Lolley

For the Observer-Reporter

newsroom@observer-reporter.com

The NFL has turned its schedule release day into a weeklong event, showing just how media savvy the league happens to be.

But considering we already know the opponents for each team, does it really matter?

Well, yes and no.

As we saw with the Steelers last season, the way the games lined up down the stretch was brutal. Not only did the Steelers play all six of their AFC North games after Week 11, five of their final nine games were played on short work weeks. None of their games in the first half of the season were played on short weeks.

And then there was the December stretch during which they played three games in 11 days, the first two on the road.

Yes, three other teams did that as well. But the Steelers opened that stretch in Philadelphia against the eventual Super Bowl champions. They then went to Baltimore before coming home to face the Chiefs. Those teams combined for a 41-10 record in 2024 with the Eagles and Chiefs squaring off in the Super Bowl.

Baltimore began that stretch against the 3-14 Giants. The teams they faced in that stretch finished 23-28. Kansas City, which like the Ravens went 3-0 in that stretch, began it against the 3-14 Browns. The teams they played also finished with a 23-28 record.

See the difference?

So, scheduling does matter.

This season, the Steelers play only two times on a short work week. And unlike last year, their AFC North games are sprinkled throughout the schedule – though they do play the Ravens twice in the final month of the season.

Sometimes, that just can’t be avoided.

The schedule is difficult at the end of the season, but the early portion of it should allow the Steelers to build some equity.

Perhaps it won’t be the 10-3 start they got off to last season, but they also don’t appear set to go 0-4 in their final four games as they did a year ago, either.

• The most meaningless statistic that you’ll see thrown out there is a team’s strength of schedule based on where it finished last season – as if nothing changes from one season to the next in the NFL.

If the NFL wasn’t aware of which teams would be good and which teams are set up to struggle, it would have continued to give every team stand-alone games.

That didn’t happen this year. The Titans, Saints and Browns didn’t get a single night game because the league feels nobody is going to want to watch them.

And the only stand-alone games those teams got was Cleveland’s game in London in Week 5. There was no getting around that.

• There’s an old saying in sports that it’s the Jimmys and Joes not the Xs and Os when it comes to the success of a coach or manager, the point being that you either have the athletes capable of making you successful or you do not.

That is why the move the Pirates made last week to fire manager Derek Shelton was nothing more than window dressing.

Joe Torre is considered one of the great managers in Major League Baseball history. He won four World Series titles and got his team to the series six times in an eight-year span.

But Torre’s record as a manager with the Mets was 286-420. In three seasons with the Braves, his teams went 257-229. He spent six seasons with the Cardinals, going 351-354.

He was considered a good manager, but maybe not a great one.

It wasn’t until he got to the Yankees and led New York to all those titles and a 1,173-767 record in 12 seasons that he was considered an all-time great.

Did he get remarkably better as a manager, or did he simply have better Jimmys and Joes? The latter is more likely the case considering that after his stay in New York, he managed the Dodgers for three seasons and went 259-227.

Torre looked like a genius when he managed a star-studded Yankees team to 114 wins in 1998. Not so much when his 1981 Mets stumbled out of the gate 17-34 because his star player was Dave Kingman.

Shelton would have killed for a Kingman in the middle of his order the past several seasons.

The Pirates’ failures have revolved around player acquisition, not what the manager has or hasn’t done on the field. A manager might decide the outcome of a handful of games over the course of a 162-game season, but better players will make you a much better team.

Ben Cherington has been general manager of the Pirates since 2019. Beyond the no-brainer selection of Paul Skenes with the first pick in the 2023 draft, the cupboard on home-grown talent is pretty thin.

Dale Lolley hosts The Drive on Steelers Nation Radio and writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.