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Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers have a relatively easy schedule in 2009 if they can handle the prime-time games.

Tom E. Curran • E-mail

Look on the bright side, Lions fans — for almost all of the 16 weeks of this NFL season, you’ll know where to be on Sundays at 1 p.m. ET.

NFL fans everywhere other than Detroit (and maybe even there) had a little hop in their giddyup Tuesday night. A pseudo-red letter day on the NFL calendar — the schedule release — came.

Even though everyone knew their teams’ opponents and the only mystery was when they would play whom, there’s still a charge to this occasion. You find out who leads off with a string of patsies, which hot-seat head coach is going to be dangling first because of an ugly early season and which team gets a kind travel schedule at the end of the season.

We’ll get to the Lions and when they can reasonably expect to break their 17-game losing streak that started at the end of 2007. First, which (projected) upper-crust teams have things lining up nicely?

The two that jump out are last year’s Super Bowl participants, Pittsburgh and Arizona.

The Cardinals — infrequent prime-time participants — get three regular-season turns on the big stage. The first comes in Week 3 when they play host to Indianapolis for an NBC “Sunday Night Football” game. Three weeks later, they play at the Giants, again on Sunday night on NBC. Their next one is Week 14 against the 49ers on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football.”

“I am excited that we have three, actually four if you count the preseason, national television games with the two Sunday nights and the Monday night,” said Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt.

The Cards also have a kind close to their 2009 with home games against the Rams and Packers. Their Week 15 opponent (their 14th game) is at the Lions.

The Steelers, meanwhile, have the traditional champions’ spot in Week 1, playing host to Tennessee on Sept. 10 at 8:30 p.m. ET on NBC. After that, the Steelers have four more prime-time games — Sunday night against San Diego in Week 4, Monday night Week 9 at Denver, Sunday night Week 12 at Baltimore, and Thursday night Week 14 at Cleveland.

Although the Steelers don’t have a bear of a schedule at first glance (the combined 2008 winning percentage of their opponents this year is .434, the fourth-easiest schedule using that measure), those prime-time games take a chunk out of teams because travel cuts into the next week’s preparations.

One positive for the Steelers is that, each of their three prime-time road games is followed by a home game, which is something the schedule-makers are trying to make sure happens.

A few other things that jump out:

• The Cowboys’ early season could go either way. They open at Tampa, a team under new coach Raheem Morris. That should start them off right. Dallas then has to play back-to-back prime-time games against playoff teams (Sunday night Week 2 playing host to the Giants in the lid-lifter for the Cowboys’ new stadium, Week 3 playing host to Carolina on Monday night), followed by road games at Denver and Kansas City. Then comes their bye. On one hand, at least they get those prime-time games at home. Still, having to play those two — with the attendant hoopla — then hop a plane the next two weeks could be a bit of a challenge. How Commander Wade Phillips handles those first five games could go a long way toward determining the tenor of their season. Dallas has three more prime-time games after that, including another back-to-back pair of road games in Weeks 15 and 16 at New Orleans and Washington.

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