Steelers Clips
Former Colorado quarterback Kordell Stewart, who spent 11 years in the NFL after a 1994 Hail Mary to beat Michigan became one of the great plays in college football history, would like to return to Boulder as a member of Deion Sanders’s coaching staff.
“When you’re ‘Slash,’ you do a whole bunch of stuff,’’ Stewart told Chris Tomasson of the Denver Gazette. “Coaching is something I love to do tremendously. I would love to have it be at my institution, to be honest with you, because I just love being here.”
Stewart was back in Denver for his induction into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame.
He’s currently starting his second season as the offensive coordinator at North Forsyth (Ga.) High School. Before that, he was an assistant for five years at North Atlanta High School. Stewart nevertheless wants to return to his college program.
“We’ve had conversations [about a possible job], but [Sanders] has to do what he has to do,’’ Stewart told Tomasson. “He’s a friend more than anybody I need to have hire me as a coach. And if it’s time for me to have that opportunity to be here with him or anybody else, I’ll bite on it real quick and come in and do it.”
Stewart is fine with whatever happens.
“He’s got a great staff since he’s been here,’’ Stewart said. “He doesn’t owe anything to me. . . . He knows I love to coach. If there’s a space for me, trust me, I’ll take it and run with it.”
Sanders is entering his fourth season as the head coach of the Colorado program.
The NFL has announced the names of the current and former players that will take part in next week’s draft by announcing second-round picks.
The list includes players associated with all 32 teams, including Cardinals running back James Conner. Conner has strong ties to the Pittsburgh area after playing for the Steelers and attending Pitt, which likely made him an easy choice as the Cardinals’ representative.
Former Bears tackle Jimbo Covert, former Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett, former Chiefs defensive lineman Bill Maas, current Vikings tackle Brian O’Neill, former Jets running back Curtis Martin, and former 49ers punter Andy Lee are other Pitt alums who are set to take part.
The hometown team will be represented by four players. Former Steelers Jerome Bettis and John Stallworth will be joined by Joey Porter Sr. and Jr. next Friday.
The other players taking part and their team affiliations appear below:
Falcons: Michael Turner
Ravens: Mark Ingram
Bills: Shane Conlan
Panthers: Jake Delhomme
Bengals: Ken Anderson
Browns: Phil Dawson
Cowboys: Drew Pearson
Broncos: T.J. Ward
Lions: Calvin Johnson
Packers: John Kuhn
Texans: Billy Miller
Colts: Pat McAfee
Jaguars: Paul Posluszny
Raiders: Matt Millen
Chargers: Shawne Merriman
Rams: Tavon Austin
Dolphins: Dwight Stephenson
Patriots: Deion Branch
Saints: Marques Colston
Giants: Osi Umenyiora
Eagles: Brian Westbrook
Seahawks: Cliff Avril
Buccaneers: Ronde Barber
Titans: Jeffery Simmons
Commanders: Mark Rypien
Draft week has become, in recent years, alternative facts week.
The NFL wants the annual reality road show to feel like a big deal, and one way to do that is to maximize the number of attendees for the three-day event.
There’s a gap between the eye-popping figures the league pushes and reality. One tangible piece of evidence in that regard comes via a recent report from KDKA.
Officially, Pittsburgh expects official attendance for the 2026 draft to land in the range of 500,000 to 800,000. Per KDKA, the city’s 19,000 hotel rooms were at only 60 percent occupancy for draft weekend.
KDKA also reports that the daily attendance will be in the range of 100,000 to 200,000.
The difference comes from the fact that the NFL stacks the three days together to get the total. If the same person attends every day of the draft, that’s three — not one.
It goes beyond that. For each day of the draft, any person who exits the perimeter and re-enters the perimeter gets counted again.
Case in point. Last year in Green Bay, 205,000 attended the first day of the draft. For Friday, it fell to 175,000. By Saturday, however, the number exploded to 220,000, more than Thursday night.
Anyone who watched the draft knows that far more people attended on Thursday night than on Saturday. On Saturday, however, when the final four rounds tend to never end, people come and go throughout the course of the day. Each time they exit and re-enter the draft perimeter, the same person gets counted again.
All that said, the draft is still a big deal. But 500,000 to 800,000 sounds a hell of a lot better than 100,000 to 200,000 — even though 100,000 to 200,000 still sounds pretty good.
The Steelers still don’t know whether or not they’ll have quarterback Aaron Rodgers for 2026.
But even if Rodgers returns, Pittsburgh has to think about the future of its quarterback position.
With that in mind, the Steelers are having another young QB in this year’s draft class in for a pre-draft visit on Wednesday: Drew Allar.
Once a betting favorite to go No. 1 overall, it’s unclear where Allar will land in next week’s draft. Allar’s senior season at Penn State did not go as planned, with the quarterback suffering a season-ending ankle injury midway through the year. He said at the scouting combine in February that his ankle is on the mend and felt like he could play if he had to at that time.
A Northeast Ohio native, Allar started 35 games for Penn State with 45 total appearances over four seasons. In 2025, Allar completed 64.8 percent of his throws for 1,100 yards with eight touchdowns and three interceptions. In 2024, Allar completed 66.5 percent of his throws for 3,327 yards with 24 touchdowns and eight interceptions in 16 games.
The Steelers currently have Will Howard and Mason Rudolph on their roster at quarterback.
Allar visited with the Cardinals earlier this week and has also had a reported workout with the Jets.
The Steelers are visiting with three draft prospects from the Big Ten on Tuesday.
Brooke Pryor of ESPN.com reports that they are meeting with former Penn State guard Olaivavega Ioane, former Iowa guard Beau Stephens, and former Ohio State tight end Will Kacmarek.
Ioane started 27 games at left guard for the Nittany Lions over the last two seasons and was first-team All-Big Ten in 2025. He ranks at the top of most lists of guards in this year’s class and is often projected to be a first-round selection.
Stephens joined Ioane on the all-conference team and started 35 games during his time with the Hawkeyes. Kacmarek caught 23 passes for 254 yards and two touchdowns over the last two seasons.
Most assume quarterback Aaron Rodgers will return to the Steelers for another season. One Steelers player seems to think Rodgers remains on the fence.
Appearing on NFL Network’s Good Morning Football, Steelers linebacker Patrick Queen put the odds at “50-50,” via Jeremy Bergman of NFL.com.
“Is he gonna be back? I don’t know,” Queen said. “But hell, I’ll take him. Dude is a great teammate, great quarterback. We all know him, we all love him. He knows how to win. We just have to be better for him.”
That may ultimately be the source of any hesitation. How much better will the Steelers be this year than last year?
Much of the AFC is in flux. The Steelers are in flux, too. And Rodgers arrived in large part because of the presence of coach Mike Tomlin. With Mike McCarthy now leading the team, who knows whether the Steelers will be better, or worse, than they were in 2025?
Then there’s the reality that there’s no other viable option for Rodgers, if he wants to play in 2026. Beyond the Cardinals, every team has a clear starter — or the clear candidates to win the starting job.
Some think Rodgers will commit to the Steelers next week, when Pittsburgh hosts the draft. He could show up on the stage, using the enthusiasm of having the draft in town to boost the enthusiasm of a fanbase that is lukewarm at best regarding another year with Rodgers.
He also could wait. If an eventual contender loses its starter, his phone could ring. He could swoop in, leading the way for one of the leaders of the pack. He could cap his career with a real playoff run, not a one-and-done disaster that ended with a pick-six.
That pick-six on his last throw of the season perhaps becomes the magnet for another run. Rodgers surely doesn’t want his final act in the NFL to be the thing he avoided better than most quarterbacks who have ever played.
Even with Queen pegging the odds at even, it feels like he’ll end up in Pittsburgh. With Rodgers, however, there’s no way of knowing what he’ll do until he does it.
The Steelers expect to get word from Aaron Rodgers about his plans for the 2026 season before the draft, but they’ll still need to think about the future of the quarterback position if Rodgers does return for a second year in Pittsburgh.
A player who could be part of that future is spending some time with the team on Monday. Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reports that Taylen Green is visiting the team.
Green spent the last two seasons as the starter at Arkansas and threw for 5,868 yards and 34 touchdowns while completing over 60 percent of his passes. Green also ran for 1,379 yards and 16 touchdowns, but threw 20 interceptions to mitigate the big plays he made through the air and on the ground.
The physical tools that Green flashed in game action were also on display when he set a record for vertical leap by quarterbacks at this year’s Scouting Combine. He also ran the 40 in 4.36 seconds and we’ll find out next week if the Steelers take a chance on seeing if his athletic ability translates into professional success.
Seven years after the ship sailed on Paxton Lynch’s NFL career, he’s still dog paddling after it.
Most recently, Lynch was playing for the Colorado Spartans of the National Arena League. He suffered a torn ACL in his third game.
“I was pissed off,” Lynch told Luca Evans of the Denver Post. “And it sucks. I didn’t want it to be like this.”
The sentiment undoubtedly applies to his entire professional career. A first-round pick of the Broncos in 2016, Lynch washed out of Denver just before the start of his third season. Lynch started four total games in two seasons, with 792 passing yards and a passer rating of 76.7.
He didn’t play for anyone in 2018 before getting a shot to make the Seahawks in 2019. He eventually landed in Pittsburgh after Ben Roethlisberger suffered a season-ending elbow injury against Seattle in Week 2.
The Steelers waived Lynch before the start of the 2020 regular season. He then spent a season in the CFL before playing for three teams in two years with multiple spring leagues.
In both 2024 and 2025, Lynch didn’t play. The Spartans were his return to football.
“I was like, ‘OK, if I play this year in arena football,’” Lynch said, “‘I’m going to play as Paxton Lynch. I’m going to have full confidence in myself. I don’t really care.’ And that’s what I did. . . . It felt good to do that again.”
He lost that authenticity in 2018, when the Broncos signed Case Keenum to be the starter and doubt derailed Lynch’s time in Denver.
“I always knew who I was off the field,” Lynch told Evans. “But when it became Paxton Lynch the football player, and all these people had these different opinions about me — that’s when it was hard for me. . . . I was like . . . ‘You believe that you’re good. But you’re not playing good. And then all these people are saying you’re not good. So it’s like, ‘Are these people seeing something I’m not seeing?’ It was the constant battle in that.”
Whether a brief stint of feeling like himself again is the final chapter or just another page in a longer book remains to be seen. Regardless, he had talent. He wasn’t a fluke first-round pick. He was widely regarded as the No. 3 prospect in the 2016 draft, behind Jared Goff and Carson Wentz.
And if the Broncos hadn’t traded up to get Lynch at the bottom of round one, the Cowboys would have. Which would have likely short-circuited Dak Prescott’s time in Dallas before it even began. Prescott was a fourth-round pick that same year.
One of the remaining unanswered questions for the NFL offseason is whether Aaron Rodgers will be back at quarterback for the Steelers this fall.
The Steelers have indicated that they expect an answer before the draft gets underway on April 23 and it doesn’t sound like he’s shared any hints with one of the team’s top offensive players. Running back Jaylen Warren said on NFL Network that he’s not making any bets about whether Rodgers will play or retire at this point.
“You know, I’m not really expecting anything,” Warren said. “Whatever happens, happens. I’m rocking with whoever’s at the quarterback position. But if he comes back, great. If he doesn’t, then we’ll miss him.”
The Steelers will have new questions to answer if Rodgers does not decide to play a second season for Pittsburgh, so Warren won’t be the only person waiting to find out his decision in the coming days.
A couple of defensive players from the SEC had a pre-draft visit with the Steelers on Friday.
Brooke Pryor of ESPN.com reports that former Texans cornerback Malik Muhammad and former LSU linebacker Harold Perkins were in Pittsburgh. Former Memphis offensive tackle Travis Burke also met with the team.
Muhammad was a starter during his final two seasons with the Longhorns and wrapped up his college time with 30 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, a sack and two interceptions last season.
Perkins excelled in his first two seasons at LSU, but a torn ACL in 2024 slowed his ascent to the NFL. He returned in 2025 with 56 tackles, eight tackles for loss, four sacks and three interceptions.
Burke spent one season at Memphis after playing at Gardner-Webb and Florida International. He saw time at both tackle positions over his time in college.
