Pittsburgh Steelers

Acrisure Stadium, which opened as Heinz Field in 2001, has been characterized by an endless ocean of yellow seats. That finally will be changing.

Via Chris Adamski of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Steelers owner Art Rooney II said that black seats are being installed in the upper deck of the venue.

“We were making changes to the seating,” Rooney said. “The sea of gold sometimes gets overwhelming, so we did a little black and gold in there this time around.”

Rooney said it will be a “random pattern.” The practical impact will be to deaden the retina-searing impact of empty seats in the facility, which happens when the place clears out early during a Steelers game or throughout a Pitt home game.

It’s a smart move, albeit long overdue. The bright yellow was too much. Sprinkling in black seats will make the visual impact far less jarring.

Five years ago, then-Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers hijacked (perhaps not intentionally) the draft-day news cycle with word that the 49ers nearly traded for him. It prompted speculation throughout round one of the 2021 draft that a trade could happen, with the Broncos emerging as a potential candidate.

It didn’t happen, obviously. Rodgers, the 2020 NFL MVP, won the 2021 NFL MVP award before spending one more year in Green Bay.

Now, with (to date) only the Steelers linked to Rodgers during the 2026 free-agency cycle, Denver has potentially re-entered the chat.

There’s talk of the Broncos possibly bringing Rodgers in for a visit. The motivation comes from the possibility that current starter Bo Nix won’t be fully and completely back to 100 percent when Week 1 rolls around.

This notion conflicts with recent comments from Broncos owner Greg Penner, who declared at the NFL’s annual meeting that Nix is “ahead of schedule” from the broken ankle he suffered late in the playoff win over the Bills and should be good to go for OTAs.

Beyond the basic question of whether Nix will be healthy is whether Nix gives the Broncos the best chance to get to the Super Bowl and win it. Coach Sean Payton, who like any coach who has won a Super Bowl with one team is keenly aware that no coach has won a Super Bowl with two different franchises, may be tempted to roll the dice on a possible one-year upgrade (if Rodgers would truly be an upgrade) in order to finish the work the Broncos started in 2025.

For Payton, the possibility of blazing a new trail for NFL coaches could be the thing that gets him to Canton. If he thinks Rodgers gives them a better chance to win the Super Bowl than Nix, why wouldn’t Payton at least ponder the possibility?

From Rodgers’s perspective, which team gives him a better chance to walk away with a second Lombardi Trophy in his back pocket, the Steelers or the Broncos?

It’s all very early. And it’s not an April Fool’s Day gag. The Broncos could be turning to Rodgers, at a time when the Steelers have assumed the position for the second straight offseason.

If — and for now it’s a big if — Rodgers ends up in Denver, he wouldn’t play the Packers (unless the two teams meet in the Super Bowl, for the first time since the 1997 season). But he would make visits to the Jets, the Steelers, and one more trip to San Francisco, the team he wanted to draft him in 2005 and the team that tried to trade for him in 2021.

The Lions had added some depth to their secondary.

Detroit announced on Tuesday that the club has signed safety Chuck Clark.

Clark, who turns 31 in April, spent last season with the Steelers. He appeared in 15 contests with five starts, playing 44 percent of defensive snaps and 48 percent of special teams snaps in games played.

Clark previously played the 2024 season with the Jets, starting 12 games. While he missed the 2023 season with a torn ACL, Clark played his first six seasons with the Ravens, starting 63 games for the club.

In 123 career appearances with 80 starts, Clark has registered five interceptions, 37 passes defensed, seven forced fumbles, and 4.5 sacks.

With Patrick Mahomes on the mend from a torn ACL suffered late in the 2025 season, there’s certainly a chance he won’t be ready for the start of the regular season.

That’s part of why Kansas City traded for Justin Fields to be the team’s backup QB.

The No. 11 pick of the 2021 draft, Fields has plenty of experience for a backup, having started 53 games for the Bears, Steelers, and Jets over the last five seasons.

But while Fields has been more effective as a runner than a passer in the league, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid noted on Tuesday how the different elements of Fields’ skillset can fit within the offense.

“I like his game,” Reid said at the annual league meeting on Tuesday. “He can do the drop back game, he can do the movement stuff, play-action — whether it’s a naked or a sprint-out game. He has that whole package that he can do. He understands the screen game, understands how to set it up. He obviously — he’s going to be one of the better athletes on the field when he’s out there. He’s fast, big, likes to play the game. So, I mean, all the stuff I like.”

Given Fields’ athleticism, talk seems to follow the quarterback wherever he goes that there could be some sort of package to get him on the field at a different position. Reid effectively said he’s not planning much for that, but the head coach also didn’t close the door on that idea.

“We’ll see how that goes. I’ll talk with him and see where he’s at with that,” Reid said. “But he’s more than a gadget guy, that’s not how I’m looking at it. That’s not why we brought him in. We brought him in to play quarterback if he’s needed to play quarterback.

“And then whatever goes from there — if he gets bored, we’ll have a couple of things for him,” Reid added with a chuckle.

Fields rushed for 1,143 yards with eight touchdowns in 2022, leading the league at 7.1 yards per carry.

Last season for New York, Fields started nine games, compiling a 2-7 record. He completed 62.7 percent of his passes for 1,1259 yards with seven touchdowns and one interception. He took 71 carries for 383 yards with four TDs, which works out to 5.4 yards per attempt.

NFL owners approved the Steelers’ resolution to permanently allow teams to have a video or phone call with as many as five free agents during the two-day negotiating period before the start of the league year.

Previously, teams could talk only to agents during what has become known as the “legal tampering window” except for players who are self-represented.

Now, teams can speak to as many as five impending free agents.

It allows a limited chance for a team and a player to get acquainted during negotiations and also makes it easier to facilitate travel for players who have agreed to a contract.

The Steelers proposed the resolution last year, and it was approved for a one-year trial basis for this offseason.

Carson Beck and Ty Simpson are making some of the same stops as they make the pre-draft rounds of NFL teams.

NFL Media reports that Beck and Simpson are both slated for meetings with the Cardinals and Dolphins ahead of next month’s draft. Both quarterbacks have also spent time with the Jets already.

Simpson had a brief meeting with the Cardinals at the Combine as well and their head coach Mike LaFleur called him a “good dude and we’ll see where it goes.”

Beck has also met with the Steelers while Simpson has spent time with the Browns as he works to find a home in the NFL.

Mike McCarthy has answered enough Aaron Rodgers’ questions to last a lifetime. He was asked more on Tuesday at the NFL owners meetings in Scottsdale, Arizona.

But the Steelers head coach still doesn’t have an answer from the quarterback about his playing future.

“I’m confident,” McCarthy said. “But at the end of the day, it’s a personal decision. I think we’re in a good space.”

McCarthy and Rodgers talk regularly, most recently on Monday night.

“He says hello,”’ McCarthy quipped.

Rodgers is expected to return for a second season in Pittsburgh, his 22nd season in the NFL and his 14th with McCarthy as his coach. Like last offseason, though, Rodgers is taking his sweet time.

McCarthy said he was not going to “get into the timeline,” but it seems like McCarthy knows which way the wind is blowing already.

“It’s going good,” McCarthy said. “It’s been very positive, and we’ll just continue to talk. We talk regularly.”

The Steelers, for a second consecutive offseason, are Rodgers’ only option. He will either sign with Pittsburgh or retire.

Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy is speaking regularly with the person he hopes will be his starting quarterback in 2026.

McCarthy said on Monday that he has been in regular communication with Aaron Rodgers throughout the offseason. It’s still not clear whether Rodgers, a free agent, will sign with the Steelers, but McCarthy described his conversations with Rodgers as productive.

“Just like they always are, life, football, so what’s going on at the facility,” McCarthy said, via Steelers.com. “Really engaged into what’s going on. I would just say he’s in a very positive space. We’ll just continue to engage in conversations. We’ve been talking weekly, every couple of days, so we’ll just continue to do that.”

McCarthy coached Rodgers in Green Bay from 2006 to 2018. They won a Super Bowl together, and Rodgers was twice named NFL Most Valuable Player during his years playing for McCarthy. The two still have a good relationship.

“The personal part of it will always be the same,” said McCarthy. “Football guys, they talk about the past. We talked about plays in 2010. We’re talking a lot of football, his experience in Pittsburgh. We talk a lot about football and just where he is in his life right now.”

Right now, Rodgers is not a Steeler. McCarthy hopes he will be soon.

The NFL is struggling to balance the P.R. and legal realities of diversity in key positions with a potential political assault from those who regard the three-letter “DEI’ acronym as a four-letter word. Through it all, the results speak for themselves.

Exhibit A? The 2026 photo of the NFL’s head coaches. Exhibit B? The 2026 photo of the NFL’s General Managers.

Falcons G.M. Ian Cunningham, whose promotion from assistant G.M. in Chicago somehow didn’t result in the Bears receiving a pair of third-round compensatory picks, addressed the situation on Monday, in comments to David Brandt of the Associated Press.

“Just from my position, especially being a Black man, there’s still work to be done,” Cunningham told Brandt. “Now that I’m in this position and have this platform, I’m going to be intentional about what we do from a grassroots effort to a director level. . . . I do think it’s important to give people of all races and sexes a chance to be in a position to further their career.”

Cunningham’s comments come only days after Florida took aim at the Rooney Rule as discriminatory against white men, and in the aftermath of Steelers owner Art Rooney II acknowledging that “the environment has changed.”

The environment has changed, at the national level and in plenty of states. The law has not. And the NFL’s historical performance as it relates to the hiring of coaches and General Managers — coupled with the league’s decision more than 20 years ago to make interviews of minority candidates for the most coveted positions mandatory — shows that the longstanding legal standard has not been met.

The problem is that there has been no real accountability. And the irony is that the first governmental effort to enforce the law comes from the perspective of the demographic that has benefited from the league’s traditional hiring practices.

The league undoubtedly hopes the Florida problem will go away. That the demand made by Florida attorney general James Uthmeier to abandon the Rooney Rule as to the Dolphins, Jaguars, and Buccaneers is more performative than substantive.

Whatever Uthmeier’s motivations and intentions, the NFL should do the right thing. Don’t run. Don’t hide. Stand up and say, in a clear, loud voice, “Bring it on.”

Would that be good for business? Probably not. But doing the right thing isn’t always good for business. The truest test of an organization’s true character is whether it will do the right thing when it could be bad for business.

Will Aaron Rodgers be back with the Steelers in 2026?

The door still seems to be wide open for the 42-year-old quarterback, who helped lead Pittsburgh to the postseason in 2025 and now would be reuniting with his former head coach, Mike McCarthy.

It’s just a matter of Rodgers letting the Steelers know his plans.

To that point, team owner Art Rooney II said on Sunday that he’s expecting to have Rodgers’ answer before the draft begins — in Pittsburgh — on April 23.

“I still expect that,” Rooney told Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday at the annual league meeting in Arizona. “I expect we’ll get an answer before the draft.

“When I talked to him and Omar [Khan] talked to him, he told us he wasn’t going to take as long this year as he did last year [to make a decision],” Rooney added. “I’m not 100 percent sure what that means, but I expect something before the draft.”

As noted by Dulac, the Steelers believe Rodgers’ decision will come down to retirement or returning to Pittsburgh for another season.

Rodgers completed 65.7 percent of his passes for 3,322 yards with 24 touchdowns and seven interceptions for the Steelers, helping the club go 10-7 and win the AFC North. But the postseason loss to the Texans was ugly, with Rodgers finishing the contest 17-of-33 for 146 yards with one interception. He also took four sacks.

Pittsburgh currently has Mason Rudolph and Will Howard on their roster at quarterback.