The preseason is over, so meaningful football is just around the corner. The Pittsburgh Steelers will open their season at home against the Atlanta Falcons in Week 1. Former NFL scout John Middlekauff thinks Pittsburgh will win easily.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could see the Steelers beating the Falcons by like, 20 points. That actually might be a favorite of mine. Steelers, Falcons in Pittsburgh, Rodgers, McCarthy,\u201d Middlekauff said Friday on his 3 And Out podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Steelers have gotten off to hot starts in recent years. Their season opener in New York last year was close, but the Steelers\u2019 offense got off to a good start in a 34-32 win. In 2024, the Steelers visited the Falcons to open the season and left with a narrow 18-10 win.<\/p>\n Pittsburgh started 4-1 last season and were 10-3 at one point in 2024. This year, the schedule is once again favorable early in the season. Aside from New England in Week 2, the Steelers won\u2019t be playing a team that made the playoffs last year until after their Week 9 bye.<\/p>\n There is a caveat this year, though: nearly an entirely new staff is in place. Mike McCarthy has had slow starts in his previous coaching tenures. Green Bay went 8-8 during his first year in charge. And in 2020, his first season in Dallas, the Cowboys won just six games. Although he knows his quarterback very well, plenty of change across the staff and the roster could cause the Steelers to stumble early.<\/p>\n Even so, the Falcons feel like a team the Steelers need to beat if they have any hope of contending this year. Whether it\u2019s Tua Tagovailoa or Michael Penix Jr., neither quarterback option is particularly scary. They\u2019ll also be without a couple of key defenders: James Pierce Jr. is out after being suspended<\/a>\u00a0and Jalon Walker is out with an ACL tear. Middlekauff thinks the cards are in the Steelers\u2019 favor when they host the Falcons in a little under two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The preseason is over, so meaningful football is just around the corner. The Pittsburgh Steelers will open their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[33179,223,254,2554,224,7,19255,6,57],"class_list":["post-988149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-atlanta-falcons","tag-3-and-out","tag-atlanta","tag-atlanta-falcons","tag-atlantafalcons","tag-falcons","tag-football","tag-john-middlekauff","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh-steelers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117190086061730381","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=988149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=988149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=988149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=988149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}