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.

 

To Absent Friends - Phil Garner

 

Sad news arrived this past weekend when we learned of the death of former Pirates second baseman Phil "Scrap Iron" Garner at the age of 76.

It was in March of 1977 that Pirates GM Harding Peterson swung a nine player deal with the Charley Finley of the Oakland A's.  The Pirates sent six players of Oakland, including pitchers Dave Guisti and Doc Medich, and received three in return, the most significant of whom was second baseman Garner, and yet another piece was put in place that would lead to a World Series Championship for the Pirates in 1979. Garner played five seasons for the Bucs, made the All-Star team twice, and during that 1979 postseason Garner hit .417 against the Reds in the NLCS and .500 (12 for 24) against the Orioles in the World Series.  In noting Garner's passing on PTI yesterday, Michael Wilson noted that while Willie Stargell and Dave Parker were the stars of that Championship team, perhaps no one epitomized the grit and intensity in which that team played the game than Phil Garner, and in that regard his "Scrap Iron" nickname, bestowed upon him by Stargell, said it all.

 

Garner had a 16 year career as a player, and then went on to manage three different teams, the Brewers, Tigers, and Astros, for a total 15 seasons.  In 2005, he managed the Astros, then the National League, to their first ever pennant.  The following season, the All-Star Game was played in Pittsburgh, and Garner, as Manager of the NL team, named his 1979 Pirates manager Chuck Tanner as his Special Assistant in managing that squad.  It was class move by Garner in tribute to his old manager and the home town fans in Pittsburgh.

"Scrap Iron"

He was a regular at Pirate Alumni events

Garner becomes the twelfth member, including skipper Chuck Tanner, of that World Series team to leave us.  Fourteen members are still alive.  You can see the list at the end of this post.

RIP Phil Garner.

	1979
Pitchers	Jim Bibby
	Bert Blyleven
	John Candelaria
	Grant Jackson
	Bruce Kison
	Dave Roberts
	Don Robinson
	Enrique Romo
	Jim Rooker
	Kent Tekulve
Catchers	Steve Nicosia
	Ed Ott
	Manny Sanguillen
Infielders	Tim Foli
	Phil Garner
	Bill Madlock
	Willie Stargell
	Rennie Stennett
Outfielders	Matt Alexander
	Omar Moreno
	Mike Easler
	Lee Lacy
	John Milner
	Dave Parker
	Bill Robinson
Manager	Chuck Tanner
	Deceased	12
	Still With Us	14

"Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994)

 

So we decided to watch a movie last night, and we wanted something light and funny, and we selected "Four Weddings and a Funeral", a 1994 British made RomCom that I had recorded off of TCM a few weeks ago.  Linda had never seen it.  I was certain that I had seen it, but as I watched, I realized that this was indeed a first time viewing for me.

We loved it.

The story revolves around a group of friends in Britain who seem to do nothing but attend weddings, while all the time wondering if true love will ever happen for them.  It stars Hugh Grant, a big star now, of course, but relatively unknown then, especially in America.  At the first of these weddings he meets an American woman, played by Andie MacDowell.  Complications, as they say, ensue.

After the third wedding takes place, we do get to that funeral of the title, which causes two of the main characters, Grant's being one of them, to question if love, true love, will ever find them.  During this funeral, one of the characters recites the W.H.Auden poem "Funeral Blues".  I was unfamiliar with this work, but found it quite moving. I have since looked it up and reread it a number of times already.  HERE is a link to it.

I confess to being a big fan of Hugh Grant.  I have always said that no actor, before or since, has ever been the equal of Cary Grant in terms of star power and pure movie star panache, but Hugh Grant comes the closest. "Four Weddings and a Funeral" made Grant a star, with his shaggy hair, goofy glasses, and trademark stumbling, bumbling style of speaking.  The movie is worth seeing for his performance alone.

MacDowell and Grant

Grant with co-star Kirstin Scott Thomas

Loved the hats she wore in this movie!

"Four Weddings and a Funeral was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award in 1994, along with "Quiz Show", "Pulp Fiction", and "The Shawshank Redemption".  All of them lost out to that year's winner, "Forrest Gump".  "Forrest Gump" was a good movie, but I could make a case that each of the other four would have been a more deserving winner.

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

Ramblin' Thoughts On A Saturday Afternoon

 Some Idle thoughts from an idle mind.....

The Pirates have started the 2026 season on a fairly good note.  They are 8-5. The staring pitching of Skenes, Keller, Mlodzinski, Ashcroft, and Chandler had been quite good, if not very good.  New additions Brandon Lowe and Ryan O'Hearn have delivered as hoped; new addition Marcel Ozuna, not so much.  

And 19 year old rookie phee-nom, best prospect in baseball Konnor Griffin has arrived!

After getting an RBI double in his first AB, Griffin has collected only two hits since and is hitting .143, in 21 AB's in seven games.  Way too early to worry, and one thing that Griffin has shown is that he can flash the leather.  It appears that the Pirates have got their short stop for the next decade or so.

Did I say "decade"?  The other big news concerning Griffin is that he and the Pirates signed a nine year, $140 million contract  extension that will tie Griffin to the Bucs through the 2034 season.  This, of course, is completely out of character for Bob Nutting's Pirates, and it certainly is a positive development, but let's not give Nutting the Dapper Dan Award because of this.  As the owner of a professional sports team that purports to be all in on winning and winning championships, this is doing merely what you are supposed to do, something that Nutting has NOT done in his tenure as Pirates CEO.  As comedian Chris Rock says, you don't get special credit for doing WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO.  

As usual, The Grandstander will wait until the thirty game mark of the season before giving a more thorough evaluation of this season's Buccos.

********

We are now halfway through (now speaking in hushed, reverential tones) The Masters, A Tradition Unlike Any Other. I confess to having been glued to the early round coverage of the event on Prime and ESPN for the last two days.  What can I say?

While I have no gripe against Rory McIlroy, he's a likable enough guy, I hate to see what he has done over these last two days.  Through two rounds, he is at twelve under par and has a six shot lead over his nearest competitor.  He has threatened to remove any semblance of drama from this year's tournament.  Like I said, I have no axe to grind with McIlroy, but I hope that he comes back to the field a bit, or that three or four guys surge forward to make it interesting come the fourth round on Sunday.

********

In honor of The Masters I will close with this musical interlude from well known golfer and sometime crooner Bing Crosby.  May all your shots be "straight down the middle".

Catching Up on Oscars Movies

Linda and I are spending time this week catching on some of the Oscar winning and nominated movies that we have missed.

This, of course, was the big one.  The winner of Best Picture, Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Supporting Actor (Sean Penn), Adapted Screenplay (Anderson), and two others.  This movie opens in the early part of the 21st century, and we see that a group of radical and quite violent "revolutionaries", among them Leonardo DiCaprio, are using any means possible to protest.....capitalism? government immigration policy? does it really matter?  

Anyway, Leo is in love with one of his fellow revolutionaries and they have a baby.  The woman get captured and turns states' evidence and goes into witness protection, leaving Leo and the baby behind.  We then flash forward to the present day.  The baby is now 16 years old, and Leo is doing his best to raise her while he drowns himself in booze and drugs.  His days as a revolutionary are far behind him.

Then, his daughter gets kidnapped and Leo has to revert to his old ways and his old network of radical friends to help him rescue her.  There is  humor in this as DiCaprio tries to get back in the game but keeps forgetting passwords and other such things from his old gang, but this is no comedy. It is a straight up thriller of a movie as he tries to save his daughter. Thrown into this mix is Sean Penn as fascist-like Army Colonel Steven Lockjaw, who has a personal interest in finding the missing girl.

Oh, and the movie culminates in a car chase involving DiCaprio, Penn, and the daughter, Willa, played by Chase Infiniti, but let me tell you, this is unlike any car chase scene that you have ever seen in a movie.  Director Anderson has filmed what has become a movie cliche in a way that is new and different, and just as exciting as Steve McQueen in "Bullitt", Gene Hackman in "The French Connection", or any chase in any James Bond movie.  Trust me on that.

If I had to vote, I still think that I would cast my ballot for "Sinners" as Best Picture of the Year, but I won't argue that Academy's Choice of "One Battle After Another" for the big prize.

In addition to Penn, who certainly deserved that Oscar, this movie scored three other acting nominations:  Teyana Taylor for Best Supporting Actress as Perfidia, Leo's lover and the mother of Willa, but I think that Miss Infiniti, as Willa, probably deserved that nomination every bit as much if not more that Miss Taylor.  Benicio Del Toro was nominated as Best Supporting Actor and he was terrific as the guy who helped DiCaprio in his quest without ever losing his calm demeanor as all Hell was breaking loose around him.

Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for Best Actor.  Michael B. Jordan was most worthy of that Oscar this year, but DiCaprio was terrific in this one, and he, too, would have been a deserving winner.  In fact, after watching this I had the thought "Has DiCaprio ever been less that terrific in anything that he has ever done?"  I don't think so, and to that end, I commented that he has become this generation's version of William Holden, who was also terrific in everything that he ever did.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

********

"Blue Moon" tells the story of famed lyricist Lorenz Hart, who teamed with songwriter Richard Rodgers to write and produce some of the greatest songs of the first half of the twentieth century, songs that populate the Great American Songbook.  The movie takes  place on one night in 1943, the night that "Oklahoma!" debuted on Broadway.  That show went on to redefine musical theater in America, and it was also the first show that Rodgers wrote with Oscar Hammerstein II, after his falling out with Hart years earlier.  As Hart bemoaned, "the biggest hit of Rodgers career will be the first show that he wrote without me."

The movie is essentially a filmed play.  It takes place in one setting, Sardi's Bar and Restaurant, and Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart carries the show.  He has probably 75% of all of the dialog in the movie.  Hawke was deservedly nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in this one.  Andrew Scott, who I liked so much in the 2024 Netflix series "Ripley", played Richard Rodgers, and Margaret Qualley played Elizabeth, a 20 year old girl with whom the 47 year old Hart was smitten.  A scene of a conversation in the Saudi's coat check room between Hawke and Qualley towards the end of the movie was positively terrific.

Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley, Ethan Hawke

I knew who Lorenz Hart was, but I certainly did not know his story, so this movie was an education as well as an entertaining movie experience.  The movie is worth seeing on many levels, not the least of which the terrific music on Rodgers, Hart, Hammerstein, and others of that era that plays throughout the entire movie.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

That Duke-UConn Game

I hope that you all were watching that Regional Final game between Duke and Connecticut on Sunday afternoon.  I was watching and I was rooting for the Blue Devils for two reasons: (1) I had a small ($3.00) on Duke, and more importantly (2) I really, really dislike UConn Coach Danny Hurley, and take great joy when he gets beat.

Throughout the first half when Duke led by as many at 19 points and took a 15 point lead into the locker room, it looked like was going to get my wish.  Then, the Huskies began their version of Aesop's Tortoise and the Hare fable and kept chipping into Duke's lead and turning what looked to be a rout into a game.  Still Duke led by five with 1:51 to play, and had a 72-70 lead and the ball with :10 to play after the UConn kid goes 1 for 2 on the free throw line.  All they had to do was inbound the ball, hold onto it, get fouled, and game over.  Instead, Duke attempts a pass across mid-court, it gets deflected and stolen by UConn, and then...

Freshman Braylon Mulllins sinks a shot from the logo, and UConn wins 73-72.

Michael Wilbon calls things like this a "shout-out-loud" moment when you see it, and that was certainly true as both Linda and I, well, shouted out loud as we watched it unfold.  As I often say, a game like this is why you follow sports.

Two other comments:

When you saw Braylon Mullins being interviewed post-game you realize what a kid he is.  I swear, he probably only has to shave once, maybe twice, a week.

Then there is the head coach.

In a profession - college head basketball coaches - that is filled with irritating and obnoxious people, Danny Hurley has to rank in the top five in those categories, but good God, it has to be conceded that he is one helluva coach.  He has already won two national championships at UConn, and on Sunday he was in a  situation after that first half where his team was getting its ass kicked all over the court, and had every reason to throw in the towel and go through the motions in the second half and say "wait 'til next year".  But they didn't, and Hurley had to be a combination of Knute Rockne, Vince Lombardi, John Wooden, and Bill Belichick to keep his team in that game and overcome what appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle. You gotta tip your hat to him, however begrudgingly.

In his Substack today, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar included this two minute clip, of the last two minutes of the game (minus commercials and time outs).  Kareem's comment was brief:

"It’s not over until it’s over. But when it’s over…wow, what’d I just see?"

It's Opening Day!

Yes, today is Opening Day, actually, Opening Night, of the 2026 Major League Baseball season, and joy reigns throughout the land.  It starts with a nationally televised game between the Yankees and the Giants.  The game will be played at the Polo Grounds!  Well, the Polo Grounds are long gone, and it's not actually televised, it is being streamed on Netflix, so you have to pay to see it.  MLB tapping another revenue source.  The rest of MLB opens tomorrow, and the Pirates opener against the Mets will be nationally televised on NBC.  

Why would NBC, back in the baseball business after many years, choose the Pirates to open the season?  Well, this guy no doubt played key role in that decision:

Yep, that is 2025 Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes, fresh off of a great showing in the World Baseball Classic who will be the starter for the Bucs tomorrow.

Why is it, Grandstander, you may ask, haven't you written about your favorite baseball team all winter and throughout Spring Training?

It's a good question, and the truth is, there is no good reason for it, other than, perhaps, laziness on my part?  Or, perhaps the performance of the Pirates and their chickenshit, cheapskate ownership has just turned me into a complete cynic when it comes to them.  In fact, the Pirates did make some moves this off season that might make you feel encouraged.  They actually traded for and signed some significant, we hope, players over the off season - Brandon Lowe, Ryan O'Hearn, and Marcel Ozuna to name three.  After years of doing NOTHING in the off-seasons, they actually did SOMETHING this past winter, but the question is, will that SOMETHING  be good enough to actually make a difference?  

One thing that the team does have is good starting pitching, led by Skenes, who, if he isn't the best pitcher in baseball, is certainly among the top three or four.  Other starters include Mitch Keller, Brandon Ashcroft, and Bubba Chandler, plus the hope that Jared Jones will be available to pitch by Memorial Day.  With exception of Keller, these are young guys with great potential, but they haven't shown that they can do it in the Bigs just yet.

The problem last year was that the Pirates couldn't hit or score runs.  Perhaps the additions of Lowe, O'Hearn, and Ozuna will rectify that, but there are still giant question marks at third base, short stop, catcher, and the outfield, which figures to be a sieve defensively.  Looming over all of the Bucs' offensive questions is 19 year old Konnor Griffin, the #1 prospect in all of MLB.  He will start the season in Triple-A Indianapolis, where the team hopes to get him some AB's against a higher level of pitching.  (He has never played above Double-A and only there for half a season.)  It is hoped that he lights it up at Indy, joins the team by Memorial Day, and begins a career at short stop where he will become a combination of Cal Ripken, Derek Jeter, and Honus Wagner.

Some people are saying that the team has a chance to make MLB's expanded playoffs this year.  They were a God-awful team last year, and it is hard to imagine that they could make the leap from Pathetic to Post-Season in a single year.  The betting lines have set the Over/Under on Pirates wins at 76.5.  Seventy-seven wins would represent a six game improvement over 2025.  That doesn't seem like much, but, the Pirates have made me very skeptical about their chances.  I saw my first Pirates game in 1959, and the fact that the ownership of this team has turned someone like me so cynical may be their greatest crime of all.

I bet the OVER.  Maybe they can improve by seven games, but I would still be shocked if that break .500 this year.

Hope I'm wrong, and, as always, LET'S GO BUCS.