The Pittsburgh Steelers are a little over 24 hours out from finding out their entire 2023 NFL schedule. 

Everything from divisional games, bye week placement, and travel miles will be calculated and dissected. 

But today we're going to predict who the Steelers will play in week one, analyzing recent opening day games and which teams are on Pittsburgh's schedule. Let's dive in. 

Opponents

The Steelers released an official press release on every team they will play in 2023, saying the following: 

At home, the Steelers will play the Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns in the North, in addition to the Arizona Cardinals, Green Bay Packers, Jacksonville Jaguars, New England Patriots, San Francisco 49ers and Tennessee Titans.

On the road, the team will face Baltimore, Cincinnati and Cleveland, as well as the Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Las Vegas Raiders, Los Angeles Rams, and Seattle Seahawks.

Last Five Opening Week Matchups:

• Cleveland Browns (2018)
• New England Patriots (2019)
• New York Giants (2020)
• Buffalo Bills (2021)
• Cincinnati Bengals (2022)

We can now make some initial hypotheses, given the Steelers have played an AFC opponent 80 percent of the time in the past five seasons. If we're going to use that as a benchmark, we can scratch the Cardinals, Packers, 49ers, Rams, and Seahawks off the list. 

That leaves divisional opponents, (Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Cleveland) as well as the Jaguars, Patriots, Titans, Texans, Colts, and Raiders. We can also see that the Steelers have only played a divisional opponent in week one 40% of the time over the past five seasons. 

So if we're taking everything into account thus far, we can hypothesize that the team will open the 2023 season against either the Jaguars, Patriots, Texans, Colts, or Raiders. 

Obviously, this exercise is merely an educated guess, and now I'm going to throw some subjectivity into the mix. The Patriots, Texans, and Colts don't exactly scratch my itch as week one openers, even if they all have either new quarterbacks or play callers. 

So it's down to the Jaguars and the Raiders as are potential week one opponents. I would love to see a matchup of young, dual-threat passers in Pickett vs Lawrence if the Jaguars played the Steelers, but I have a different idea in store. 

The NFL loves nostalgia and last year's holiday matchup against the Raiders was a flashback to the 1970s with two long-standing franchises battling out a tough-fought game in a white Christmas affair as the snow sprinkled throughout Pittsburgh. 

So, I believe the league will copy this matchup, but this time with the flair of Vegas and the heat of the desert, as I predict the Steelers face the Raiders in Las Vegas to open the 2023 season. It was a bit of a windy road to get there, and I could be way off, but hey, at least we took a shot.