With questions lingering regarding tackle Broderick Jones’s neck injury, the Steelers needed help at the position.
They got it.
The team hosting the draft selected Arizona State Max Iheanachor at No. 21.
No tackles were taken in the first eight picks. Since then, seven had been selected.
It’s not a sexy pick for the Steelers, but it’s the kind of meat-and-potatoes move that will be much needed to improve the offense. Especially since, overall, the talent cupboard may be more bare than anyone realizes.
Obviously, the Steelers may need to be thinking about quarterback at some point. One thing we won’t know is whether they would have taken Ty Simpson, if he’d still be on the board.
Pittsburgh is getting the NFL’s second-biggest annual event this weekend with the draft in town. It’s unlikely Pittsburgh will ever get the NFL’s biggest annual event, though.
Steelers owner Art Rooney II says he’d love to see a Super Bowl in Pittsburgh, but he knows what a long shot it is.
“I wouldn’t take it off the table,” Rooney said on WDVE. “It’s definitely a long shot, and there’s a lot of other cities like us that would love to do that, So maybe maybe it’s down the road a little ways, but I wouldn’t take anything off the table. Let’s put it that way.”
Most NFL owners wouldn’t want a Pittsburgh Super Bowl without a dome in the city, and Rooney says that’s not happening.
“Not in my lifetime, let’s put it that way,” Rooney said when asked if Pittsburgh would ever be a dome city. “Football is an outdoor sport as far as I’m concerned, and I think most Pittsburghers would agree. There’s nothing better than going out and seeing the game with the snow flying and it’s it’s a lot of fun on those kinds of days.”
Pittsburgh also doesn’t have enough hotel rooms for a Super Bowl, which would mean getting the game would require having thousands of attendees stay in cruise ships on the Three Rivers, similar to what Jacksonville did with cruise ships in the St. Johns River when it hosted Super Bowl XXXIX. That’s not impossible, but Rooney knows it’s unlikely.
Earlier this month, the NFL announced the 16 prospects who were attending the draft in person. Seventeen have shown up this week.
According to the league, Oregon safety Dillon Thieneman is in Pittsburgh this week as the 17th prospect celebrating his selection in person.
The late addition of Thieneman to the guest list makes sense considering Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has reported that the Steelers “really like” Thieneman.
Thieneman is among the best safety prospects after Ohio State’s Caleb Downs. Thieneman, a Purdue transfer, had 96 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, a sack and two interceptions in 2025.
He joins five players from Ohio State, including Downs, and 11 other prospects in Pittsburgh.
The presumptive No. 1 overall pick, Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, is among the invitees not attending the draft this year. Mendoza wants to celebrate with family, including his mother, Elsa, who has Multiple Sclerosis, at home in South Florida.
Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy has worked with plenty of talented receivers in his past who are still tearing up the league.
Among others, he had Davante Adams in Green Bay and CeeDee Lamb in Dallas. Adams led the league with 14 receiving touchdowns for the Rams last season, while Lamb recorded his fifth consecutive season with at least 1,000 yards.
Now that McCarthy is with the Steelers, how does he view DK Metcalf?
“I don’t really like to get into comparables because I’ve been so blessed to work with so many great players, but also just about DK, his skill set is top-notch,” McCarthy said in his Tuesday press conference. “When you can take slants and different vertical routes to the house, he’s so powerful and he’s so strong, so just trying to get to know his strengths and how we can utilize him.
“We’ll try to build a route menu for him particularly, not different than all of the conversations we’ve had about receivers because I think it’s critical that they play the 1 position, the 2 position, or the 3 position. So, we’ll continue to look at that for DK.”
Metcalf, 28, caught 59 passes for 850 yards with six touchdowns in 2025, his first season with the Steelers. The wideout’s best season came back in 2020, when he caught 83 receptions for a career-high 1,303 yards with 10 TDs.
Steelers owner Art Rooney II persuaded the NFL to move Ravens fans behind Steelers fans at the 2026 NFL draft in Pittsburgh.
Rooney said on WDVE that when he saw the initial layout for where each of the 32 teams’ fans would be told to congregate, there was an area where Ravens fans had better seats than Steelers fans. Rooney got the NFL to change that.
“I did ask that, you know, on the normal seating chart, I noticed that the Ravens fans were sitting in front of the Steeler fans in one section of the draft theater. So I asked them to make that change, and they agreed to make that change,” Rooney said.
Rooney said that the draft will be a celebration of the city of Pittsburgh, the Steelers and football’s rich history in Western Pennsylvania, and that the league has been very good about allowing the Steelers to have a voice in running the event.
“When you’re hosting the draft the league lets you do some things you don’t normally do during the draft,” Rooney said.
And that includes veto power over the seating chart.
