Pittsburgh Steelers executives aren’t the only ones eagerly awaiting a decision from Aaron Rodgers on whether he plans to play football this season. The NFL schedule makers also were following the Rodgers saga very closely.
Rodgers has had talks about signing with Pittsburgh but hasn’t made a final decision if he wants to play in 2025, leaving the Steelers with Mason Rudolph and rookie Will Howard currently at the top of the depth chart.
The league still gave the Steelers four prime-time games and one standalone international game in Ireland in Week 4 in the schedule released Wednesday, banking that the team’s strong following and history of success under coach Mike Tomlin will make them an attractive team for networks no matter what Rodgers decides.
“We tried to play it down the middle,” NFL scheduling executive Mike North said Thursday. “We don’t know anything more than than anybody else. The schedule was built for Coach Tomlin and for the Steelers. If Aaron decides to play, it probably just makes many, if not all, the Steelers games a little more interesting.”
North said the Steelers’ opener against one of Rodgers’ former team, the New York Jets, likely would not have been in a 1 p.m. EDT regional window had the league known for sure that Rodgers would play.
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But the league made sure that a potential game between Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers, for whom he won four MVPs and a Super Bowl, did get prime-time treatment in Week 8 on NBC’s Sunday night package instead of having it crowded into an afternoon window.
“If it fell on a Sunday afternoon, for instance, it becomes a dominant story of the day, Aaron’s first game against his old team,” North said. “So put it in a national window, if Aaron is the quarterback, it’s a great story. If Aaron’s not the quarterback, it’s still Packers-Steelers Sunday Night Football in Week 8. It sounds like a football game.”
Young QBs get high-profile games
The success of last season’s rookie quarterback class was evident in the schedule led by Washington’s Jayden Daniels getting eight standalone games, including five in prime time, and three others in the late afternoon doubleheader window.
The other five first-round QBs from the 2024 draft also got their share of high-profile games, with J.J. McCarthy and the Vikings getting seven standalone games, including a Monday opener against Caleb Williams and Chicago, plus two international games.
Michael Penix and Atlanta have six standalone games, with Williams and the Bears and Bo Nix and the Denver Broncos getting five each, and Drake Maye and New England getting three.
“When we meet with all the broadcast partners at the beginning of this process, and they make their list of, ‘Hey, here’s some of the games and some of the teams that we’d most be interested in,’” North said. “Obviously, you’ve got your healthy dose of Dallas and Kansas City on there. But a definite representation Lions, Washington, Denver, teams that have played their way in the bigger national television windows.”
NFL goes head to head vs. CFP
For the second straight year, the NFL will go head to head against college football on the day the College Football Playoff has scheduled three quarterfinal games. The NFL gave Fox a doubleheader featuring an NFC title game rematch between Philadelphia and Washington and an NFC North division showdown between Green Bay and Chicago.
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NFL executive Hans Schroeder said the league has no plans to move games off that weekend even with the CFP now in place, saying the NFL has played games on the third Saturday in December in 37 of the past 40 seasons.
“That’s an NFL day,” he said. “We think our fans love having football on that day. We love having football late in the year. There’s a lot of stories to tell at that point as we’re running into the playoffs in our chase for the playoffs. That’s what we’re focused on. You have to ask the CFP how they’re thinking about the future.”
Fair or foul
With the opponents for each team determined by a formula and known since the day the last season ended, much of the attention on schedule release days is on other factors.
One that has gotten more attention in recent years from outsiders is rest disparity, with some teams forced to play more games against teams coming off a bye or Thursday night games than other teams.
The NFL said it has found that teams on more rest have only a slight advantage. That means that while it is a factor in choosing a schedule, it’s only one of many, including getting the best games in the best TV windows, stadium availability, balancing games between network partners, international games, bye weeks and long road trips.
After being on the short end of the stick with a rest disparity of worse than minus-20 in each of the past two seasons, the San Francisco 49ers were on the plus end this season with games against teams coming off a bye and a rest advantage overall.
“We’re certainly hopeful that we found a schedule this year that wasn’t a significant negative total disparity for the 49ers,” North said. “We happened to. But I wouldn’t say that if we thought the very best schedule overall had the 49ers at minus-8 or minus-10 or minus-12 that we couldn’t have played it. It would have been a factor, but maybe not a disqualifying one.”
The Raiders have the worst rest discrepancy this season at minus-17 days, and Washington is the only team with four games against opponents coming off a bye.
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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