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.
Steelers Clips
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.
Toledo safety Emmanuel McNeil-Warren appears headed to being a late first-round draft pick later this month.
McNeil-Warren has become a popular top-30 visitor.
He is currently visiting the Dolphins in Miami after recent visits with the Patriots, Browns, Cowboys and Falcons, according to Jordan Schultz of The Schultz Report. McNeil-Warren will head to Pittsburgh after finishing in Miami today.
McNeil-Warren earned second-team All-American honors last season when he totaled 77 tackles, three forced fumbles, two interceptions and seven passes defensed.
Dane Brugler of TheAthletic.com ranks McNeil-Warren as his 23rd-best player in the draft, third among safeties.
The Steelers traded for Michael Pittman Jr. last month and they may not be done adding to their wide receiver room.
Field Yates of ESPN reports that they will host Denzel Boston on a pre-draft visit on Tuesday. Boston has also had reported visits with the Browns and Raiders.
Boston caught 125 passes for 1,715 yards and 20 touchdowns at Washington over the last two seasons.
The Steelers have DK Metcalf along with Pittman at the top of their receiver depth chart. Both of those wideouts are listed at 6-foot-4 and Boston is listed at the same height, so Pittsburgh would have a bevy of big targets should they add the wideout in the draft later this month.
Steelers cornerback Joey Porter Jr. doesn’t think he’s getting the recognition he deserves after three years in the league.
Porter was a second-round pick in 2023 and has been a starter for almost all of his time in Pittsburgh. He has not been credited with a touchdown against him since the middle of his rookie season and there’s some dispute about whether or not that should be on him because of the coverage the team was in at the time.
It’s a strong mark in his favor either way as is the low completion percentage opposing teams have accumulated while throwing his way, which is why Porter said on the Blueprint podcast that he thinks he’s been a top-five corner since his rookie season. He also said he thinks he’s unfairly maligned because he committed too many penalties during his second season.
”That’s what people really harp on my game about, is the PI’s and penalties,” Porter said.” But it’s like, you hold no other DB under that microscope or grade them under just — I haven’t gave up a touchdown in three years. Not one. No wide receiver put over 50, 60 yards on my head alone and I travel with the best of them. And they want to talk about penalties. Even to bring up penalties this year. I had five, which equaled out to 50-something yards. You’re saying I’m not top-five because I had 50 yards in penalties? Like that’s crazy.”
Porter is eligible for a contract extension this offseason and the push the Steelers make to give him one will be a sign about where they fall in the debate about Porter’s play.
Free agent running back Najee Harris visited the Raiders on Friday, according to the NFL’s transactions report.
He previously visited the Seahawks.
Ashton Jeanty, a first-round pick in 2025, is the Raiders’ starting running back, with Dylan Laube and Chris Collier also on the roster.
Harris is working his way back from a torn Achilles. He was injured in a Sept. 21 game against the Broncos while playing for the Chargers.
Harris, who signed with the Chargers as a free agent last March, landed on the non-football injury list ahead of last summer’s training camp after a fireworks accident. He missed all the Chargers’ training camp practices but returned for the beginning of the season.
The 2021 first-round pick spent his first four seasons with the Steelers and ran for 4,312 yards during his time in Pittsburgh.
