The Pittsburgh Steelers spent months preparing for their trip to Paris, and international football still found a way to mess with the plan. Before the team had settled into its hotel, head coach Mike McCarthy was already wishing he had made one different call.
Speaking to media on Friday, McCarthy said he regretted skipping the Stade de France after the Steelers canceled a planned walkthrough there ahead of Sunday’s regular-season game against the New Orleans Saints. Pittsburgh had flown overnight on Thursday and hoped to loosen up players at the stadium soon after landing. A forecast of steady rain and strong wind pushed the team to change course while the plane was still in the air. The second-guessing started when the team bus drove past the stadium anyway.
The session was never meant to be a full practice. It was a thirty-minute activation after the flight, and a chance to get a first look at the place they would play on Sunday. A hotel conference room can’t give players a feel for the turf or the stadium layout.
“We had two plans coming in,” McCarthy told reporters. “Just really wanted to activate the players, you know, after the long flight. Just based off the communication with the weather and just in the reality of the timing too, we had to make the decision before we landed just to make it, you know, put it together. But frankly, driving by it, I wish we would have stopped.”
It’s a rare admission from a coach who usually defends every logistical decision. He read a tricky forecast, built a backup plan, then looked out the bus window and wondered if he’d been too cautious. Most people know the feeling of canceling outdoor plans for bad weather that then clears up. Few of them are preparing an NFL roster for an international game at the time.
The weather worry was real. Wind and rain did hit Paris on Friday, and the Saints also faced weather-related limits on media viewing at their Versailles facility. Pittsburgh couldn’t gamble on an outdoor session while juggling travel and equipment from the air, and once the diversion was set, reversing it would have taken more than a word to the bus driver.
So the Steelers did their activation and light walkthrough work inside the team hotel. That kept the fitness purpose of the session without another trip across the city, but it cost them an early look at the venue. That matters because Pittsburgh already had less time to adjust than its opponent.
New Orleans arrived in Europe on Monday after its game against the New York Giants and has spent the week settling in. Pittsburgh practiced at home, flew out Thursday evening and landed early Friday morning. Analysts had already debated those different approaches before the weather complicated things.
The Steelers’ roster skews old. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers is 42, defensive lineman Cameron Heyward is 37 and pass rusher TJ Watt is 32. Each keeps an individual recovery routine, but staying fresh and feeling comfortable in a new stadium are different questions, and a short visit could have answered the second without taxing the first.
Rodgers has said he would generally have preferred an earlier arrival. McCarthy defended the shorter schedule by pointing to his players’ ages, the toll of the previous game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and next week’s divisional game at home against the Cleveland Browns. Those factors don’t vanish because a walkthrough got rained off, and they explain why he stressed recovery routines.
Still, the itinerary left little margin for error. When a visiting team arrives later than its opponent, every chance to get comfortable in the host environment counts for more. A missed thirty-minute walkthrough won’t decide Sunday’s score, but if the staff thought the stadium visit was worth scheduling, losing it isn’t nothing just because the indoor backup worked.
McCarthy does have evidence that a late arrival can work. Pittsburgh followed a similar compressed timetable before beating the Minnesota Vikings 24-21 in Dublin during last season’s international series. One win under one set of circumstances doesn’t make bad weather, short sleep or unfamiliar surroundings harmless, though.
Sunday will be the NFL’s first regular-season game on French soil. By kickoff the Steelers will have had time to look over the field, but Friday’s lost visit can’t be rescheduled. The Saints get a longer stay, and the Steelers have a head coach who still believes his approach best serves a demanding schedule that includes Cleveland next.
McCarthy’s regret won’t appear in the box score. If Pittsburgh starts slowly, though, that drive past the Stade de France may be remembered as the moment he saw the chance he’d passed up. The weather won Friday’s argument, but he needs his team to win on Sunday.
