Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Detroit Lions FREE LIVE STREAM (8/24/24): Watch Week 3 NFL Preseason Game Online | Time, TV, Channel

The Pittsburgh Steelers will face the Detroit Lions in an NFL preseason game at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan on Saturday, August 24, 2024 (8/24/24).

Fans in both markets can enjoy a FREE Try to fuboTV or DirecTV Electricity.

What you need to know:

What: NFL Preseason, Week 3

Who: Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Detroit Lions

When: August 24, 2024

Where: Ford Field

Time: 1:00 p.m. ET

TV: NFL Network

Station finder: Verizon Fios, AT&T U-Vers, Comcast Xfinity, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice,Helmsman,DIRECTV, Court, Hulu, fuboTV, loop.

Live stream: fuboTV (free trial version), DirecTV Stream

Here is a recent NFL story:

Jennifer King was a successful basketball coach when she made the difficult decision to pursue a career in football.

She didn’t have to look back.

Within three years of entering the sport, King became the first Black full-time coach in the NFL when Washington hired her as an assistant running backs coach in 2021. She spent three seasons with the Commanders before joining Matt Eberflus’ staff with the Chicago Bears this year as an offensive assistant, focusing on running backs.

King is one of 15 women serving as full-time coaches in the NFL this season, a new league record and the most of any professional male sports league worldwide.

King’s journey began in 2018 when she met then-Panthers coach Ron Rivera at the NFL’s Women’s Forum, an annual event that brings together attendees with owners, general managers, head coaches and club executives.

King had just led Johnson & Wales University-Charlotte to the United States Collegiate Athletic Association Division II title, but football was her heart’s desire. She played quarterback and safety on a women’s tackle football team and wanted a chance at coaching.

“I always liked football more,” King said. “But giving up basketball was hard. We had won a championship. I was national coach of the year. Things were going really well for me. And just quitting was hard, but I just felt like I couldn’t give it up.”

King’s basketball team practiced close enough to the Panthers’ practice facility that she could hear and see them. When she met Rivera, he already knew who she was because she had basketball experience. Rivera’s wife, Stephanie, was an assistant coach in the WNBA and she told him a woman who played basketball would make a good coach.

“He invited me to rookie minicamp,” King said. “I thought I would be there for two days, but it turned into about four months.”

King spent the summer of 2018 as a coaching intern with the Panthers, working with wide receivers, before joining Rick Neuheisel’s staff as an assistant wide receivers and special teams coach for Arizona in the short-lived Alliance of American Football.

King returned to Carolina in 2019 to work as a running back coaching intern and joined Dartmouth’s staff as an offensive assistant this fall.

When Rivera became head coach in Washington in 2020, King rejoined his staff as a coaching intern. The following year, he gave her a full-time position.

“She had a drive that just said she really wanted to do this, and she played the game too,” Rivera said. “She talked about the little things she learned while playing and showed how aware she is of the game. So I just thought she had that desire, that drive to want to do this at the highest level, and I wanted to create an opportunity.

“During our internship, what I appreciated most was that she was smart enough to know what she didn’t know. And you could tell that because she got really curious. She asked good questions, she listened and she didn’t pretend to know. Believe me, I know (male) trainers who pretend to know. And when they do, they’re usually wrong. But she just listened when she didn’t know something, and that’s what really fascinated me: that she was willing to just step back, listen, take it all in and ask questions.”

Over the past five years, there has been a 187% increase in the number of women in NFL football operations positions. Since its inception in 2017, over 400 participants have gone through the Women’s Forum and opened over 250 opportunities for women at all levels of football.

“The first women’s forum I attended, all the women there had other jobs outside of football and wanted to get into football,” King said. “I think this year almost everyone there has already worked in football, which is incredible. So I think we’re definitely on the right track. There are a lot of shining stars coming through the ranks as we move up.”

King said she has faced no challenges as one of the few female trainers in a male-dominated industry.

“I’ve been fortunate to work with some great teams,” she said. “Coach Flus, we have a great team here. It’s all about development, which is great. I love it. He puts a lot of emphasis on leadership. So the challenges haven’t been what people might think. There haven’t been as many of those like, ‘Oh, here’s a woman.’ I haven’t really experienced any of that. It’s about building those relationships and trust in building with the players and the team you’re working with.

“I think it’s cool to see so many women doing great things in the league now, not just as coaches, but in all areas, on the business side, on the team level, people doing great things all over the place. Obviously it’s the coaches that people see, but there are a lot of great people doing cool things that you don’t see as much.”

Rivera, a two-time AP NFL Coach of the Year, has been a leader in diversity and inclusion throughout his career and said he could envision the NFL having a woman as a head coach in the future.

“I think it has to start with the coordinator first, and as long as we continue to give women the opportunity to succeed or fail, we’ll never really know until we give them that chance,” Rivera said. “But I think we’ve created enough opportunities that ultimately the right one gets the chance.”

Maybe that will be King.

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