Four other times the Steelers recently had games moved on short notice

An announcement was made early Saturday afternoon that the Pittsburgh Steelers game at the Buffalo Bills was changed from a Sunday kickoff at 1:00 pm ET to Monday at 4:30 pm ET. However, this isn’t the first or even the second time that this has happened in recent memory.

With each of these changes being outside the control of the team, Steelers Nation was patiently waiting to see if they’d have yet another unscheduled change to their calendar for this weekend’s Wild Card game. If oddsmakers would’ve been involved, some of those folks could’ve made some money – and there’s a chance the Steelers-Bills game could still be moved again. State information shown here on the best PA online betting sites suggests that fans frequently engage in friendly wagers on these platforms, enhancing the thrill of these significant sporting events.

Under the watch of Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, the Steelers’ schedule has changed multiple times. This upcoming matchup is only one of the recent changes the Steelers have had to endure.

Embed from Getty Images

2020 Tennessee Titans & The Bye Week

The 2020 NFL season is infamous for cancellations and lack of fans in attendance due to COVID-19 precautions. In what will be forever known as a wild season with cardboard cutouts and piped-in crowd noise, this season is also well known for screwing over several teams with last-minute changes.

When the NFL exercises the flex option in their schedule, any changes to the schedule must be made within two weeks of the stated game time. However, during the epidemic, caution was thrown to the wind and the Steelers were ultimately penalized for another team’s wrongdoing.

The Tennessee Titans, who were Pittsburgh’s would-be Week 4 opponent, had a large outbreak of positive tests. The league postponed the game, switching the Steelers midseason bye in Week 8 up to the Week 4 spot – which is the earliest week bye weeks occur, subjecting the Steelers to a longer in-season grind than they were planning for.

Worse yet, the team wasn’t notified of this switch until Thursday of the week leading up to the game when the Steelers already practiced rather than used the time as they would to rest on a bye week.

This led to a further shift in the schedule when this game was moved to Week 7, with the Steelers and Ravens being shifted to Week 8 instead. (The Ravens bye week was moved up to Week 7, which then gave them an advantage heading into playing the Steelers!)

Embed from Getty Images

2020 Week 12: Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens were once again at the center of a major schedule swap when their team tested positive with a number of COVID cases heading into their Week 12 matchup with the Steelers.

Originally scheduled as a Thanksgiving night kickoff, the game would be postponed three times, first to a Sunday afternoon, and then to Tuesday, before the league settled on a similarly unconventional weekday start time as will occur against the Buffalo Bills this Monday.

At one point, the Ravens had 20 players on the COVID list, which pushed kickoff to Wednesday, December 2nd at 3:40 pm ET. The multiple changes also meant that the Pennsylvania governor’s ban on having fans in attendance went into effect, leaving the few thousands who could attend the turkey day game seeking refunds and Pittsburgh playing in front of another empty Heinz Field.

The fallout of this game was losing LB Bud Dupree to a season-ending knee injury; one the team would be hard-pressed to overcome.

Embed from Getty Images

2020 Week 13: Washington Football Team

Overcoming the changes to the Baltimore game mentioned above, and losing players to positive tests themselves, the Steelers would ascend to an 11-0 record heading into their Week 13 game against Washington. However, their winning streak would be snapped after having this next game played within a short time span. After playing on a Wednesday afternoon, the Steelers were only given one day’s grace to recover, with their Sunday kick moved to a Monday afternoon at 5 pm.

The 6-5 Baltimore Ravens were given an additional day and then some, with their next game moved to an 8:05 pm time slot on Tuesday. Baltimore’s next game would also land on a Monday night, giving them a much more reasonable trek as they went on to win five-straight following their Wednesday loss to the Steelers, to finish 11-5.

Pittsburgh, on the other hand, would drop four of their next five to finish 12-4.

Embed from Getty Images

2021-22 Wild Card at Kansas City

It seems like forever ago, but there was a time when the NFL playoff games were all scheduled to be completed by Sunday evening. With this being the second season in which the postseason was expanded to feature seven teams from each conference, the league found a reason to move a game into primetime.

Originally scheduled for a 1:05 pm kickoff on Sunday, the Steelers-Chiefs game was pushed back to 8:20 pm for “weather and safety concerns”.

The change was two-fold, as admitted by the league itself: