The Pittsburgh Steelers have received significant criticism from some sects of pundits and fans for their potential Ireland travel plans for their Week 4 matchup. The Steelers will face the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL’s first regular season game in Ireland on Sunday.
However, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gerry Dulac reported Tuesday the league has dictated the team’s travel plans to Europe.
“FYI, the Steelers wanted to go over early in the week, but the NFL said no and making each [team] arrive at the same time,” Dulac wrote Tuesday. “I don’t know the exact reason for the change.
“Maybe it has to do with something about a competitive advantage. But it wasn’t the Steelers’ decision.”
With that report, the Pittsburgh sports fan base has shifted its criticism from the Steelers to the NFL.
Steelers International Series History
The Steelers don’t have a lot of experience playing in the league’s international series. But on the one occasion the team played a regular season game in Europe, it didn’t go well.
The team’s travel plans may have played a role.
For a Week 4 matchup in London during 2013, the Steelers flew to the English capital on Thursday before the Sunday matchup. Former quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said on his podcast in 2023 that the team was “so exhausted and gassed” at the end of the matchup.
Steelers defensive lineman Cameron Heyward has told stories on his podcast that coaches were so tired Friday that they were sleeping in meetings.
Any American who has traveled to Europe knows it’s a difficult adjustment. Generally, the best way to get on the local time the fastest is to take a redeye flight and try to sleep on the plane. Those flights land in Europe in the morning.
The average person is often tempted to take a nap upon arrival. But that usually results in staying on U.S. time. The best tactic is then to stay awake as long as possible.
But the average American flying to Europe doesn’t have to immediately attend a meeting or practice. NFL teams arriving Friday have about 48 hours to adjust to the local time zone before playing in the game.
The Steelers didn’t adjust well 12 years ago. They lost the matchup 34-27.
NFL Rebuffed Initial Steelers’ Ireland Travel Plans
In May, Steelers president Art Rooney II told reporters the team would have a similar Europe travel schedule as 2013. Rooney came under fire after that announcement.
With Dulac’s report, though, the discourse around the Steelers Ireland travel plans has changed.
“Should the NFL be meddling in team decisions like when to travel? They don’t for teams traveling across the country, which is just as long of a flight as the east coast to the UK,” wrote Steelers Depot’s Ross McCorkle.
All fans should support competitive balance. But if the league influenced Pittsburgh’s Ireland travel plans for fairness reasons, the NFL is emphasizing competitive balance in some areas of the series and not others.
The Vikings are going to play back-to-back international games in Europe during Weeks 4 and 5. How is it balanced for the Vikings to already be acclimated to the European time zone while they play the Cleveland Browns, who fly across the Atlantic just a couple days prior to the matchup?
Furthermore, teams get to choose whether or not to take their bye week after playing in Europe. That choice doesn’t really impact the international series, but it could create a competitive imbalance the following week.
That’s a team choice. But if organizations have that option, why can’t they choose when to fly to Europe? As McCorkle pointed out, the NFL doesn’t dictate travel inside the U.S.
The Steelers are playing at 9:30 am in Week 4 if the players don’t get their bodies on the new time zone. Based on their local time zone, west coast teams play at 10 am in the east.
How the Steelers adjust to Dublin time will be a Week 4 storyline. But if the team encounters the same issues as 2013, the league is at fault, not the Steelers.
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