The Steelers Draft Selections, 2026

Before weighing in on the matter of the Steelers Draft, let me begin with a story that I tell every year at this time.

Sometime back in the pre-Chuck Noll era of Steelers Football, and shortly after the NFL Draft of that given year, back when the draft was not a three day nationally televised extravaganza, my dad runs into Steelers DT Ben Magee (ask your parents or grandparents, kids) at some downtown Pittsburgh lunch counter.  "Hey, Ben," Frank asks "what do you think of those guys the Steelers drafted?"

Ben replies "You don't know nothin' about any them until they get into camp."  

True then, true today,  but with that in mind, here are your newest Pittsburgh Steelers. 

Round
1	Max Iheanachor	OL	Arizona St
2	Germie Bernard	WR	Alabama
3a	Drew Allar	QB	Penn State
3b	Daylen Everette	CB	Georgia
3c	Gennings Dunker	OL	Iowa
4	Kaden Wetgen	WR	Iowa
5	Riley Nowakowski	TE/FB	Indiana
6	Gabriel Rubio	DL	Notre Dame
7a	Robert Spears-Jennings	DB	Oklahoma
7b	Eli Heidenreich	RB	Navy

For the third time in four years, the Steelers selected an offensive lineman with their first round pick.  Now we all know that O-linemen are important building blocks of any great team, but let's be honest, selecting an offensive lineman with your first pick is about as un-sexy as it gets.  As one local scribe put it:  It's like getting a US Savings Bond for Christmas.  It's solid gift, one that could achieve long term value for you, but it sure isn't any fun.  As history goes, Alan Faneca and David DeCastro turned out to be terrific first round selections for the Steelers.  Tom Ricketts, not so much, and the jury is still out on Broderick Jones and Troy Fautanu.  Let us all hope that Iheanachor (pronounced "I-hawn-a-chore") turns out to be the next Alan Faneca.  We'll know by the start the 2028 season how this pick turns out.

It's always fun when your team drafts a quarterback, and the selection of Penn State's Drew Allar should prove to be no exception.  It puts him in direct competition with last year's sixth round pick Will Howard, whom many were expecting to be QB#2 this season.  This, of course, assumes that Aaron Rodgers will be back as QB#1.  It also means that Mason Rudolph may be looking for employment come the end of training camp in September.  Who knows, but like I said, it sure is going to provide endless fodder among the gas bag talk show crowd.  The dreaded "Quarterback Controversy" will be sure to rear its ugly head in Steeler Nation in the months ahead.  It will be great fun.

The other pick that packs a lot of emotion with it came with the team's final selection, RB Eli Heidenreich of the Naval Academy.  First off, some Steelers "sources" are saying that he is a Christian McCaffrey-like talent.  That's quite a statement, but if he's half the player that McCaffrey is, the Steelers have struck gold in the seventh round. Secondly, how great was it to see him come on stage waving that Terrible Towel while wearing his Navy uniform, and thirdly, HE'S A LOCAL KID!!!!  A Yinzer!!! A graduate of Mt. Lebanon High School, just like Buccos skipper Don "Donnie" Kelly and Chicago Cubs outfielder Ian Happ!  Who isn't going to be rooting for this kid to make the team? Realistically, he's going to be at the bottom of the depth chart at his position, and special teams may offer him his best chance of making an impact with the Steelers in 2026.  Also, what happens in regard to Heidenreich's commitment to serve in the US Navy?  How does that work around a job in professional football?  Just curious.

Speaking of special teams, the pick of Iowa WR Kaden Wetjen is an intriguing one. Along with second round pick Germi Bernard, Wetjen fills a definite need at the WR position, but I've heard it said that his best contribution could come as kickoff and punt returner, and that REALLY fills a need for the team.  Despite how special teams coach Danny Smith was lauded by the media in recent years, when was the last time you saw a Steeler return a punt for twenty of more yards or advance a kickoff beyond the Steelers forty yard line?  If that happened at all in 2025, I sure don't remember it.  Maybe Wetjen is the guy to do so this coming season.

The other draft pick that is garnering a lot of the attention is this guy, third round selection Gennings Dunker:

That flame red Jaromir Jagr-like mullet has already made him a popular choice among fans.  I can see him letting it grow to Troy Polomalu length that should be seen on ads for some Western PA automobile dealership by October.  He might even get the same Levin Furniture deal that Kenny Pickett got.

Of course, none of these guys has played a single down in pro football, so we should all hold off with grading "how the Steelers (or any team for that matter) did in the draft" at least, as Ben Magee so wisely put it, "until they get into camp" and probably not until the end of the 2026 season.

And I cannot leave the subject of the 2026 without addressing the fact that is was a local event, held right here in Pittsburgh.  The preparation for this event took years, and it did cause some inconveniences as the draft approached in regard to traffic restrictions, but by all accounts, it was smashing success, and a major economic boon for the region, although reports are coming in that some smaller businesses didn't do quite as well as hoped.  It will probably be years before the long range economic impact on the City and region can be accurately measured.  In any event, we are told that 325,000 people jammed the "draft theater" area between Acrisure Stadium and PNC Park on Thursday....

...and that 805,000 people "attended" the Draft and Draft related events over the three day period, although how they measured those figures is a mystery to me.  The whole thing came off without incident.  It was quite the event, and even though Linda and I didn't attend any of it, it sure was fun to experience it.  One special highlight for me was at the opening when all of these guys appeared on stage with Roger Goodell.

Ben Roethlisberger, Mel Blount, TJ Watt, Cam Heyward,

Lynn Swann, Hines Ward, Terry Bradshaw

Lots of Gold Jackets and future Gold Jackets on stage

Good luck to Washington DC in hosting this event in 2027.  As if that city doesn't have enough security issues with which to deal.