My best guess is that many details of the NFL schedule were worked out well before April 9. That's the day Pittsburgh Steelers star running back Le'Veon Bell was suspended by the NFL for three games.
But whether it was on purpose or by accident, the NFL did the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots a huge favor. The Patriots will play the Steelers, without All-Pro running back Bell, to open the 2015 NFL season on Thursday, Sept. 10. The defending champs get the honor of hosting the first game of the NFL's regular season, and it's usually against a marquee opponent. The Boston Herald's Jeff Howe reported that news, which was confirmed by several other outlets. The NFL's regular-season schedule will be released in full at 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
You could argue that the Steelers are the second-best team in the AFC (Miami, Denver, Indianapolis are among those who would surely disagree), and they'll have to go to New England without perhaps the NFL's best running back. The Patriots will be without LeGarrette Blount, who was suspended for Week 1 due to the same traffic stop that resulted in Bell's suspension. But you can't equate the two players. Being without Bell is an enormous blow for the Steelers in what is the toughest game on their schedule. It's a big edge for New England.
If you really want to dig into conspiracies (and boy, those are always accurate), keep in mind that the Patriots were incensed about how "deflate-gate" was handled. Patriots owner Robert Kraft demanded the NFL apologize if no ball tampering was found in an investigation that is incredibly still going on. Kraft and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell are close, as has been noted many times. The NFL sending perhaps the second-best team in the conference to Foxboro without one of its best players sure will have plenty of people wondering if that was a coincidence or an apology.
The Steelers wouldn't be in this mess if Bell hadn't gotten himself in trouble, being arrested for marijuana possession and suspicion of DUI. So the Steelers can really only blame their running back for missing this game, no matter who the opponent was. But while it seems unlikely that the NFL would go out of their way to do the Patriots a pretty big favor, the league definitely helped out the defending champions, whether it intended to or not.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdowncorner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
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