PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

It’s an exercise in futility, but everybody’s doing it.

The NFL schedule comes out, you grab a pencil or a pen and assign a “W” or an “L” next to each game your favorite team is destined to play in succession, and come up with an assessment of how the season is destined to end.

Even professionals, apparently, succumb to such an annual temptation.

Todd Haley, a former offensive coordinator for the Steelers and head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, among other things, admitted on the NFL Channel on Sirius/XM on Wednesday he’d do that very thing even when he was coaching professionally.

Nobody in the league will come clean on the record in such a fashion when they’re playing, coaching, scouting or generally managing.

But it happens.

It’s a guilty pleasure few if any can resist.

Even those who understand projecting what’s about to happen in an upcoming season based on what happened the previous season is pure folly.

The latter is confirmed every season, it seems.

It did last season, when six teams that failed to qualify for the playoffs in 2022 made it to the postseason in 2023.

That’s a 42.9% turnover, almost half of the 14-team playoff field.

That’s been the trend of late (six such teams pulled that off in 2022, seven in 2021, seven in 2020 and five in 2019).

The NFL is much more week to week than it is season to season.

It’s that way because, as the Jets were painfully reminded a season ago with Aaron Rodgers, everything can change four snaps into a campaign.

It’s that way because the unanticipated is always lurking, and sometimes that can be a good thing. Ask the Steelers, who won their way into the playoffs last season thanks to the exploits of their third-string quarterback over the final three games (an occurrence no one saw coming, even Mason Rudolph).

NFL Research tells us at least two teams have won a division title after missing the playoffs the previous season in 20 of the last 21 seasons.

And at least one team has gone worst-to-first in its division in 19 of the last 21 seasons.

It’s the unpredictability that makes the NFL so compelling.

The .533 combined winning percentage of the Steelers’ 2024 opponents, the third-toughest slate according to strength-of-schedule assessments, is just a number.

There’s no telling how all of this will play out eventually.

But the “W” and “L” Show must go on because it’s as irresistible as it is irrational.

So here we go:

The Steelers will beat the Giants on Oct. 28 because they almost never lose at home on Monday Night Football and they’ll lose to the Eagles on Dec. 15 because they almost never win in Philadelphia.

So that’s 1-1.

They’ll go 3-3 in their six AFC North Division games because the division is good enough and competitive enough that 3-3 in the division is a reasonable expectation for everybody in the division (no matter how tightly the Steelers’ division games are bunched together).

So that’s 4-4.

They’ll beat Atlanta on Sept. 8, Las Vegas on Oct. 13 and Washington on Nov. 10 because the Falcons, Raiders and Commanders are breaking in new head coaches.

So that’s 7-4.

They’ll beat the Chargers on Sept. 22 because first-year Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh, presumably, won’t have the profound advantage of illegally filming opponents’ signals in advance (not that such a tactic would be unprecedented in the NFL).

So that’s 8-4.

They’ll lose to Chiefs on Dec. 25 assuming Patrick Mahomes plays and that Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are still together, and to the Jets on Oct. 20 assuming Rodgers is still upright by then.

So that’s 8-6.

They’ll beat Denver on Sept. 15 and Indianapolis on Sept. 29 if the Broncos play rookie Bo Nix at QB and if the Colts go with Anthony Richardson, who might as well still be a rookie after playing in just four games and attempting only 84 passes last season, under center.

So that’s 10-6.

As for the Dallas game on Oct. 6, that’s a coin flip (much like Aiello’s or Mineo’s when it comes to pizza, as Cowboys head coach and Greenfield native Mike McCarthy can no doubt appreciate).

Sorry, Mike, the flip’s coming up Mineo’s this time.

So that’s 11-6.

Or not, but for now 11-6 is as good a guess as any.