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The NFL won't release it's schedule until late April, but the Pittsburgh Steelers have petitioned the league to schedule both of their West coast road games - at the San Diego Chargers and Seattle Seahawks - in back-to-back weeks to allow the team to remain on the West coast and avoid traveling across country more than once.
Per Mark Kaboly of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Steelers' president Art Rooney II isn't confident the league will oblige the team with his request. "I don't have high hopes that this is going to happen, so let's be realistic about it," Rooney said Wednesday as the NFL annual meeting wrapped up at the Arizona.
"That's why we requested it because we will stay out there if they are able to do that," Rooney said. "I don't know if that will happen."
The Steelers aren't the only team asking the league for some leniency for teams making cross-country journeys this Fall. The Baltimore Ravens also petitioned the league with a similar request as they play at the Oakland Raiders and the San Francisco 49ers. Along with those games the Ravens also play at the Denver Broncos and the Arizona Cardinals - both of whom are home opponents for the Steelers in 2015.
"I think it would be great if we were able to get that," Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. "I would be happy with that. If we don't get it, you just deal with it as it comes."
The league will have time to consider these petitions, but as teams who call the West coast home have to repeatedly travel to the East, the league most likely won't make an exception for the East coast teams traveling West.