The Steelers’ Week 11 trip to Philadelphia has already been pushed out of the spotlight.
On Monday, the NFL moved Pittsburgh’s road game against the Eagles from the 4:25 p.m. ET window on Sunday, November 22, to a 1:00 p.m. kickoff. CBS is shifting the matchup into the early slate and giving the late-afternoon slot to Jaguars-Giants instead.
That move says plenty about how the league sees this one now.
Pittsburgh enters Week 10 coming off its bye at 6-2 and sitting atop the AFC North. Philadelphia, meanwhile, has slid all the way to the bottom of the NFC East at 2-7 after dropping its seventh straight game on Sunday. What looked like a marquee November game has lost a lot of its shine.
The Steelers are not really the issue here. The Eagles are.
What was supposed to be a heavyweight matchup now looks more like Pittsburgh trying to handle a struggling opponent that is down to a third-string quarterback. That is a far cry from the kind of game the NFL wants in a featured window.
Still, the switch makes sense. Jacksonville has become the more appealing draw, with Liam Coen doing strong work since taking over the coaching staff last season and Trevor Lawrence playing the best football of his career.
The Giants are less convincing, but they are down to their third option at quarterback, J.J. McCarthy, and are hanging around just enough to stay relevant.
CBS will also have a cleaner late-afternoon slate to work with. Along with Jaguars-Giants, the other games in that window are Jets at Rams and Raiders at Broncos, and the Jaguars-Giants matchup should be the one that pulls the most attention.
This is the first Steelers game to get flexed this season, though it may not be the last. Pittsburgh’s second-half schedule includes a few games that could be vulnerable to more movement.
One of them is the Week 13 Sunday Night Football meeting with the now 3-5 Houston Texans. If Houston drops another game or two before then, the NFL could move Pittsburgh out of prime time for something more attractive.
League rules allow flex scheduling from Weeks 11 through 17 without any limit on the number of changes, so that game is very much in play.
The Steelers also have two late-season games still listed with times to be determined: a Week 16 home game against the Panthers and a Week 18 road game against the Ravens. At this point, both could easily end up as 1:00 p.m. kickoffs.
The NFL has made its view on Steelers-Eagles pretty clear, but Pittsburgh is used to early starts anyway. The flex changes the time, not the task.
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