Steelers Clips
The Cowboys rained on Pittsburgh’s draft parade on Thursday night, by trading out of the No. 20 spot and allowing the Eagles to draft receiver Makai Lemon at a time when the Steelers had Lemon on the phone.
A report emerged that the Steelers weren’t happy with the Cowboys for giving the pick to the team that plucked Lemon. On Saturday, the powers-that-be in Dallas addressed that claim.
Via Jon Machota of The Athletic, Cowboys executive Stephen Jones said, “That’s not right.” Cowboys owner and G.M. Jerry Jones added, “Not at all.”
“I don’t want to get on their bad side,” Jerry Jones said. “I’m sorry if they’re mad. But, boy, I’ll tell you what, we’ve had it happen to us a bunch of times. It [was] traded right out from under us.”
Jerry Jones explained that the Cowboys traded up one spot in round one with the Dolphins to avoid being jumped by someone else for safety Caleb Downs. That’s how the draft works. All’s fair. There’s no reason for the Steelers to be upset. If they really wanted Lemon, they should have traded up to No. 19 or higher.
The draft is a free for all. A Battle Royale. Every team for itself. If you get jumped by a team that trades up, the last team to be pissed at is the team that traded down.
That’s how the draft goes. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t understand how the draft works. And if Steelers owner Art Rooney II is upset with Jerry Jones, Rooney shouldn’t be.
Our guess, with all due respect to the report that the Steelers are upset, is that the Steelers are embarrassed by the fact that their effort to draft Lemon became a public spectacle. But they aren’t — and shouldn’t be — upset with the Cowboys for exercising their absolute right to trade down.
After Maria Taylor announced on NBA Showtime that former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin will be joining NBC’s Football Night in America, she had a football question for the man who coached quarterback Aaron Rodgers in 2025.
What will Rodgers do in 2026?
“I just think being around him for the 12 months that I’m around him, he got a love affair with the game of football,” Tomlin said of Rodgers. “And not only the game, but the process. The informal moments, the development of younger guys, the interaction with teammates. I think he has an addiction to that. And there’s only one way to feed it, and certainly, he is still capable and in really good shape, and so I think at the end of the day, he’ll play football.”
Rodgers may have an addiction to the process; he has an aversion to the offseason program. Last year, he waited to sign until the team’s mandatory minicamp in June.
If Rodgers plays, it will presumably be for the Steelers. There are no other obvious options, barring a freak injury in the coming weeks. For now, though, Rodgers has yet to tell the Steelers that he’ll be back.
And, if he does come back to Pittsburgh, the quarterback room will be crowded, given the decision to use a third-round pick on former Penn State quarterback Drew Allar. Also on the roster are Mason Rudolph and Will Howard, a sixth-round pick in 2025.
As expected, former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin is joining NBC.
The move was announced by Maria Taylor during Sunday night’s edition of NBA Showtime, with Tomlin in studio.
“I just thought it would be awesome to share insight with fellow football lovers,” Tomlin said. “I love to talk football. And so that’s just an exciting component for me. I’ve got to admit, though, there’s going to some anxiety about stepping into a new space. But good anxiety, you know? It’s good to be uncomfortable, the growth associated with that. And so, man, I’m fired up about it.”
It also was confirmed by Maria that Football Night America will take the show on the road every weekend in 2026, at the stadiums where the games will happen.
And so there it is. After 19 years without a losing season, Tomlin will continue to be in stadiums every weekend — in a much different role.
The Steelers are re-signing veteran defensive end Dean Lowry, Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports.
Lowry, 31, spent the past two seasons with the team, but he did not play a down in 2025. He tore an ACL early in training camp, landing on injured reserve.
In 2024, Lowry played 12 games with one start for Pittsburgh. He totaled five tackles, one sack, one quarterback hit and one pass defensed.
He has appeared in 132 games since the Packers made him a fourth-round selection in 2016. Lowry played seven seasons for the Packers and one for the Vikings before going to Pittsburgh.
In his career, he has recorded 272 tackles, 16.5 sacks, 35 quarterback hits and 18 passes defensed.
The Steelers have made it clear that the decision to devote a third-round pick to former Penn State quarterback Drew Allar has no bearing on the looming decision to be made, eventually, by Aaron Rodgers.
But here’s the real question. If Rodgers returns, what are they going to do with Allar, Mason Rudolph, and 2025 sixth-rounder Will Howard?
“These are all questions, answers, hypotheticals that really, it won’t change what I’ve already said,” McCarthy said Saturday, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN, when asked about the depth chart behind Rodgers. “I will coach the hell out of that room. I have a lot of confidence. I have history and experience that I will give everything I can to any quarterback in that room. . . . We want to grow the quarterback room. We don’t want to just rely on one quarterback.”
So either it’ll be Allar, Rudolph, and Howard (if Rodgers doesn’t play) or Rodgers and three backups. Common sense suggests that, if Rodgers comes back, one of the others will be gone.
Howard would seem to be the most vulnerable. Rudolph has sufficient experience to play at a moment’s notice. But they keep talking up Howard.
“I was very impressed with Will last week [at voluntary minicamp],” McCarthy said. “I know he’s a good athlete. . . . But there’s a training regimen that’s involved, but we’ll stick to it.”
McCarthy is also talking up Allar, predictably.
“Like anything, I believe in first impressions,” McCarthy said. “I’ve had a chance to watch him play, meet him at the Combine. . . . I liked everything about him. I think he’s young. I think he’s got a lot of room for growth. And he’s a young man that can throw the ball with the best of them, and that’s a great starting point to have.”
The ending point is murky, to say the least. The biggest question for now is whether Rodgers will be back. If he is, the other spots on the depth chart will become even murkier.
The NFL draft has set a new attendance record.
The official number for the Pittsburgh road show was 805,000. That breaks the record set by Detroit in 2024, which had 775,000 in attendance.
The total attendance always merits some context, even if the NFL would like to create the impression that 805,000 different people made the pilgrimage to Pittsburgh for the draft. For starters, plenty of people who attended on Thursday attended on Friday. Plenty who attended on Friday attended on Saturday.
Also, each time a person enters the perimeter of the draft area, they’re counted again. Coming and going (which surely happens during the Saturday marathon) pumps up the final number with the same person being counted multiple times the same day.
It’s still an impressive showing. But the official number overstates it. (And it’s OK to point that out, because it’s true.)
The NFL has no reason to not seize on the biggest figure. It creates the impression that the draft is something worth attending, and that anyone who doesn’t is missing out. Which gets more people to decide that, next year, they’d better not miss it again.
The three-day breakdown in Pittsburgh was 320,000, 280,000, and 205,000. If not for rain during the early hours of Saturday’s session, the number surely would have been higher.
The record may not stand for long. The method that leads to the same person being counted multiple times could lead to a million or more next year, when the draft is held on the National Mall in D.C. If there are multiple points of entry and exit, folks who stream in and out throughout the three rounds will keep driving the official tally higher and higher.
On Friday night, Eagles first-round receiver Makai Lemon was ringing the bell at the Celtics-76ers playoff game. The night before, he was on the horn with the Steelers, who were planning to take him with the 21st pick in the draft.
Unbeknownst to Pittsburgh, the Eagles had jumped up to pick No. 20. And Philly wasn’t able to get through to Lemon, since he was talking to the Steelers.
Former Eagles exec Jake Rosenberg noted on Friday that the Steelers may have run afoul of the rules by talking directly to Lemon at a time when the Eagles were attempting to reach him.
On Friday, we asked the league about the rule regarding calling prospects when another team is on the clock. Here’s the response we received earlier today: “The league reviews all aspects of the Draft the week after its conclusion.”
Obviously, the Steelers’ call to Lemon will fall within the scope of that review.
It seemed to be an innocent mistake, and the Eagles likely would have picked Lemon in that spot even if they couldn’t have made the perfunctory phone call before doing so. Besides, the embarrassment of having it known that tackle Max Iheanachor was Plan B is arguably punishment enough.
On December 23, 1972, the Steelers got their first win in playoff history with a play for the ages. Last night, for the first time since quarterback Terry Bradshaw threw the pass that became the Immaculate Reception, he held the ball again.
Bradshaw was handed the ball during a draft event at the Nemacolin resort, located roughly 70 miles from Pittsburgh.
“It’s a little deflated,” Bradshaw said once he got the ball. “Must have been up in New England.”
A fan named Jim Baker had ended up with the Immaculate Reception ball, which was used for the extra point after Franco Harris caught the pass and ran to the end zone.
Here’s where the ball should go next — into the hands of the Franco statue at the Pittsburgh International Airport.
As Steelers fans wait for a certain 42-year-old quarterback to decide whether he wants to be a Steeler again, the Steelers have added another quarterback.
With the 76th pick, the Steelers selected former Penn State quarterback Drew Allar.
So what does that mean for Aaron Rodgers?
“I don’t believe that has any impact on Aaron,” quarterbacks coach Tom Arth said Friday, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN. “Certainly, we’re here for Drew and excited about his moment and excited to have him in this room.”
On Wednesday, a day before the draft got started, I asked Steelers defensive lineman and unquestioned team leader Cam Heyward what to tell Steelers fans who were confused and concerned about the status of the quarterback position in Pittsburgh.
“Patience with the process,” Heyward said. “The team is still growing and right now we have two quarterbacks that we feel really comfortable with in Mason Rudolph and Will Howard, hopefully add another guy to the mix. But just stay patient. No team was built on Day 1 of the draft.”
On Day 2, the Steelers added Allar. If Rodgers does indeed return, either Rudolph or Howard will get the heave-ho.
It’s fair to wonder whether the Allar pick represents an acknowledgement that Rodgers may not return. Beyond that, it undermines the idea that new coach Mike McCarthy loves Howard, a sixth-round pick from a year ago. If that was the case, the Steelers would have used pick No. 76 on another position, waiting to get a quarterback later in the draft or signing an undrafted player or adding one of the various remaining free agents.
Still, the dynamics are very different than they were a week ago. Last Saturday, the sense was that Rodgers would be letting the Steelers know his plans before the draft — possibly with Rodgers showing up and waving a Terrible Towel and winning over the various fans who wonder why the Steelers keep waiting around for a free agent in whom no other NFL franchise has expressed interest during the current offseason.
The Steelers have added another quarterback to their roster. No, his name isn’t Aaron Rodgers.
Pittsburgh drafted Penn State’s Drew Allar in the third round, using the 76th overall pick on him. It’s the draft choice the Steelers acquired from the Cowboys in the George Pickens trade a year ago.
Allar joins Mason Rudolph and Will Howard in the quarterbacks room as the Steelers await word on Rodgers about his future.
Allar’s family has Browns’ season tickets, so they will have to change their allegiance.
He played only six games in 2025, missing the second half of the season with a broken left ankle that required surgery. He completed 64.8 percent of his passes for 1,100 yards with eight touchdowns and three interceptions last season.
In his career, Allar made 35 starts and completed 63.2 percent of his passes for 7,402 yards with 61 touchdowns and 13 interceptions.
