In around 36 hours, the Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys will duel in Canton, Ohio in the Hall of Fame Game. This year’s contest has extra meaning for Pittsburgh due to last year’s game being canceled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as numerous Steeler legends—Troy Polamalu, Alan Faneca, Bill Cowher, Donnie Shell and Bill Nunn—being granted football immortality that very weekend.
The NFL preseason has been widely criticized for decades due to most contests incorporating matchups of second-, third- and fourth-stringers seeing action. Its games, further, usually don’t indicate much about the forthcoming season—ask the 2017 Cleveland Browns, who went a perfect 4-0 in the preseason but never earned a win during the regular season.