I have a confession to make…

My brain works in weird ways. I have consumed so many facts and figures over my life, when new numbers enter other dates leave. On top of that, my life has become so day-to-day I often lose track of significant dates/milestones that happen.

Before you even ask, I don’t forget family birthdays or my anniversary, but other dates and times seem to just slip my mind. That, and plenty other reasons, is why we have Dave Schofield and Bryan Davis here. It was Dave who yesterday, July 15th, put in our slack channel that this date was the one year anniversary of this very website (steelcurtainnetwork.com).

It was July 1st in 2023 when I let our previous employer know we, all but one to be factual, all decided to leave BTSC and start our own venture. The transition wasn’t simple, nor was it easy, but we have done everything in our power to create a community feel, all while providing quality content on a daily basis.

Is there as much content as our previous home? Absolutely not, but we also don’t want to water down the product here.

In the past year we’ve seen a lot of changes within our own ranks. Writers who used to be staples have now take a more limited approach to content, or stopped writing. But with that came the introduction to new writers. We welcomed at least five new writers to the staff this offseason, and they’ve done tremendous work as they “jumped on a moving train”, as Mike Tomlin would say.

When it comes down to brass tacks, we left a huge website and now have a small piece of the huge Steelers media cog. It was an adjustment, but I have been extremely proud of the content we’ve put out here in the last year. Ultimately, the one thing which I’ve realized, sometimes the hard way, is what worked in one place isn’t guaranteed to work here. We are constantly leaning on the analytics to help dictate what we do in the future.

Does this mean certain articles, like the Winners and Losers article, are going away? No, but will the game recap article look different? Will it even exist? We’re making some of those decisions now as we prepare for the upcoming season.

Some might say we were crazy leaving to start from scratch. To that I say, I’d rather be my own boss and be able to dictate what, and how, we provide our Steelers coverage than constantly having requirements landing on my desk on a weekly basis. Starting from scratch isn’t easy, and there have been many frustrating days and nights wondering why more people aren’t finding our content, but I have always been a long term vision person. I see this growing, but it’s just going to take time.

I stand by my goal when starting this project of not trying to “keep up with the Joneses”, and I remain steadfast in that objective. We are going to do things our way, and we hope you, and more people you know who are fans, will come along for the ride.

Year 1 is in the books, and if people are wondering how things are going…I can’t say how excited I am for Year 2 of this project.