On Wednesday, just as the NFL Schedule Release was airing on NFL Network, the Pittsburgh Steelers dropped their 2025 regular season schedule. Fans quickly dove in to see when their favorite team would be playing in primetime or if they had any holiday games this year. One thing that many fans noticed right away was Pittsburgh's Week 5 bye.
On the surface, this might not seem like a big deal. The Philadelphia Eagles had a Week 5 bye just this past season and were able to go on to win the Super Bowl. But despite their unprecedented success, there's a reason to be furious about this.
I'll go even further: NFL schedule makers just destroyed any hope of the Steelers making a deep playoff push in 2025.
This isn't to say that a Super Bowl run could have happened if Pittsburgh had been only given a later bye week. That's not the argument. My quarrel is over getting the earliest possible bye week in the NFL and what history has shown us when this happens.
The Pittsburgh Steelers' Week 5 bye leaves fans void of hope for a realistic playoff push
The Philadelphia Eagles overcame a Week 5 bye last season and defied the odds to become Super Bowl champions, so it can be done. But in most cases, this isn't what we see.
The 14 Super Bowl winners prior to the Eagles this past season had an average bye week occurring on Week 10, and none of these Super Bowl winners had their bye before Week 7 in the year they won the Super Bowl.
Among their opponents in these 14 Super Bowls, only four of them had their bye occur before Week 7 (the Pittsburgh Steelers were one of them, and they lost to the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl 45). This isn't to say that the early bye week was the sole reason as to why teams either didn't make it this far or lost in the Super Bowl, but I'd wager it doesn't help.
Because of the Week 5 bye this year for the Steelers, Mike Tomlin's team will be required to play 13 straight regular-season games to close out the year without a break.
Assuming they don't earn the lone bye the AFC (and I think everyone would be shocked if they did), the Steelers would be playing 14 straight games if they made it to the Wild Card Round, 15 straight games if they made it to the Divisional Round, and 16 straight games without a break if they made it the the AFC Championship Game.
Are you starting to see why the NFL's earliest bye week can be so detrimental?
To make matters worse for Pittsburgh, the Steelers don't have a roster that is loaded up and down with depth (a la the Philadelphia Eagles). Instead they their best players are once again expected to be T.J. Watt, who turns 31 years old early in the season, and a soon-to-be-36-year-old Cameron Heyward. Both of these players have already been playing too many snaps down the stretch of the season, and they're only going to wear out faster this year because of their age and the schedule makeup.
The Pittsburgh Steelers weren't going to be considered a serious contender in 2025, regardless of when their bye week came. But if the goal is to make a deep playoff push, the Week 5 bye doesn't help.