The Steelers have had a number of midseason schedule adjustments over the years. Here are five games that were postponed for good reason.
After a long Groundhog Day-like week and a 19-14 win against the Ravens which shouldn’t have been, the Steelers are now 5 games away from immortality giving credit to the defense and clutch plays from Diontae Johnson, James Washington, and Eric Ebron. In another post, I’ll get into more depth about what the Steelers struggled in the game and how it may hurt them long-term like I previously stated in an earlier post, despite a week of practice and gameday interruptions.
However, it got me thinking of previous postponements or games getting rescheduled that the Steelers were ever part of, mainly for severe weather and labor issues. Wednesday’s game was the second time (all of which occurred this year) that a pandemic has affected gameplay, and here are other games in recent memory that were rescheduled or postponed that affected game-day preparations.
Steelers @ Chiefs: 2017 AFC Divisional Playoff (Ice Storm)
Bad enough you’re playing in a hostile environment based on the crowd at cavernous, but breathtaking Arrowhead Stadium, makes it worse when the weather plays a factor and takes a toll on the playing surface. Inclusion, it will take a while, especially since it’s a playoff game to get spectators, stadium workers and security, health officials, television camera workers and announcers, and both teams to arrive at the stadium without issues.
On that weekend where the game was supposed to be played the day before, a major ice storm hit the Kansas City Metro Area causing numerous interruptions and outages and it would’ve been unsafe to put cars on the highways and have the risk of accidents and pileups.
Based on that knowledge, the NFL postponed the game to the following evening to allow better weather conditions to unfold thus having the 1st Divisional postseason game to be played on a Sunday night. Happened that we played a tough opponent that night, but completely controlled all 4 quarters with a substantial performance by former running back LeVeon Bell. The following AFC Championship game versus the Patriots was a debacle though.