I have some thoughts on the NFL Draft

The Pittsburgh Steelers did some things. The tight end is back in the NFL. The team that took the best player probably took the wrong player.

There is a part of me that kind of regrets not checking out everything around the NFL Draft in person. Not because I had much of a desire to stand around in a parking lot and watch a giant corporation do a hiring and job placement event, but because the vibes seemed pretty good, there seemed to be a lot going on outside of the main stage area, and everybody seemed to be having a good time. It also didn’t seem to be the traffic or people nightmare that it was feared to be. It seemed to be a success. It put the city in a positive light. The weather was great. And that’s good stuff. Good for them. Good for everybody that had fun.

When it comes to the player selections themselves, I have some thoughts.

Especially as it relates to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

1. I am not going to sit here and pretend to have a crystal ball that will tell me which players are going to work out and which ones will not. I am not interested in assigning a letter grade to anybody or any team at this point. I am willing to give these people a chance.

What I can judge and question is the process, the strategy and the apparent mindset behind what teams did. When it comes to the Steelers, I have some questions and I have some concerns.

Those questions and concerns are not just about this particular draft class, but the entire organization as a whole and the way it is doing things right now.

They are not exactly filling me with optimism here.

• The head-coaching search seemed uninspired and like they had already made up their mind that Mike McCarthy was going to be their guy. He’s a fine coach. He has had success in the NFL. I imagine he will keep them relatively competitive. But the only other people they brought in for in-person interviews other than him were their Rooney rule requirements. They didn’t seem to have much interest in the same type of young, up-and-coming coaches they have had success with in their previous hires. I have some concerns over that.

• I have some concerns over the fact they continue to be so infatuated with a now 43-year-old quarterback that they are allowing him to string them along without a definitive answer on what his plans are. Letting this guy leave you on read for a second offseason in a row is just a weird look for one of the most storied franchise’s in the league. It makes you look desperate. It makes it look like you have no plan. Maybe they are desperate, and maybe they do not have a plan. But this is still a weird look to go through all of this for a guy that is objectively a bottom-third-of-the-league quarterback right now.

• I also have some concerns over the way their first-round pick played out on Thursday night and the way they handled that situation.

2. I have no doubt that the Steelers had a first-round grade on tackle Max Iheanachor, and I have no doubt they liked him. He also seems to be a talented prospect with a great upside. A lot of draft analysts like him, and they like him a lot. And even though the Steelers have made heavy draft investments in their offensive line over the past few years, it was still a sensible pick given the short-term (and long-term) concerns with Broderick Jones.

I get it.

But there is one undeniable and absolutely objective fact that we know here: He wasn’t the guy they were intending to pick in that spot.

They thought they were going to be getting wide receiver Makai Lemon.

We know this because there is documented, video evidence of them being on the phone with Lemon when the Dallas Cowboys were on the clock at the No. 20 spot, one pick ahead of the Steelers.

But while they were on the phone with Lemon, the Philadelphia Eagles jumped ahead of them in a trade with Dallas and picked him instead.

That is a bad look.

That is an embarrassing look.

That is also a concerning look.

Yes, teams jump ahead of other teams all the time on draft day. But it almost seemed as if the Steelers were not prepared for the possibility that somebody might do that in this instance. I can not ever recall hearing of a situation where a team, not on the clock, was on the phone with a prospect trying to talk to them and inform them they were going to pick them. Maybe it happens and we just don’t know about it because it never gets reported or documented.

But this incident was, and now we get to analyze it.

If they REALLY wanted Lemon that badly, they had 12 picks in this year’s class that could have been utilized to move up. We know the Dallas pick was for sale. We know this because they sold it. The Steelers also showed over the remainder of the weekend they were willing to move up the draft board in trades to get players they wanted. But they didn’t here.

It’s just … it’s just all very weird, and it makes them again look like an operation that isn’t all there in what it is doing.

I also say this with the knowledge that this could still very well work out in their favor. Maybe Lemon flops in Philadelphia. Maybe Iheanachor turns into the second coming of Walter Jones or Jonathan Ogden in Pittsburgh. It is all possible! It would just be an insane way to get there knowing what we know. It certainly would not have been planned that way.

3. The other fascinating part about this is that even with their likely need for a left tackle, the player they took might not even be ready to play this season and there is a non-zero chance that you are still looking at Dylan Cook as your Week 1 starter. That is not necessarily a problem, it is just … interesting.

If there is a rookie starter on the offensive line I think it is far more likely to be fourth-round pick Gennings Dunker.

4. I kind of get the mindset behind taking Drew Allar.

Until you get your quarterback, you have to keep taking swings at it. It is the most important position on the field, and until the Steelers find their next guy their ceiling is never going to change from what it has been the past decade.

Take one every year. Keep signing cheap stop-gaps to buy you time. Keep trying to develop guys. Stockpile draft picks to try and move up the board in a year where there are good quarterbacks available. Just keep trying.

So, again, I get it.

I also don’t get it because I just have very little faith in Allar as a prospect.

If the Steelers only had one third-round pick, I would be furious with that selection and view it as a likely waste. Since they had three of them, and five picks within the top-99, I am more willing to roll the dice.

He has the arm. He has the work ethic. But I don’t know if he has anything else. The negatives in almost all of his scouting reports are about a lack of accuracy, poor fundamentals and wilting under pressure in big moments. It’s great he has a cannon for an arm. It’s great he can make all of the throws. But unless you can make them consistently, accurately, and under pressure, it doesn’t really matter how far you can throw it.

NFL Draft history (and the NFL itself) is loaded with bazooka-armed quarterbacks that couldn’t place the ball and never amounted to anything as a result.

But because every offensive-minded coach thinks they can fix every million dollar arm, we find ourselves here.

Mike McCarthy better be able to work some magic here.

5. The Los Angeles Rams made a pick in the draft that got my attention, and it wasn’t first-rounder Ty Simpson. I don’t necessarily like that pick for the Rams given where they are and what their expectations are this season, but I get trying to have your next quarterback in place for when the current quarterback retires. I just don’t know what it does for Matthew Stafford when you are trying to win a Super Bowl with him before he retires.

But the pick that intrigues me is their second-round pick: Tight end Max Klare from Ohio State.

It is not the specific player that intrigues me.

It is the position.

The NFL, like all pro sports, tends to be a copycat league. Team’s try to replicate what successful teams are doing. But it’s also a league of innovation and trying to stay ahead of the curve. If you’re doing what everybody else is doing, you’re probably already behind. You have to find the next thing that is going to give you an advantage.

The Rams may have found something in 2025 with their usage of three tight end sets.

More than 30 percent of their offensive snaps last season came with three tight ends on the field, a number that is far and away higher than anything any team has used at any point over the past decade. In 2025 alone the Steelers were the second-highest three tight end team at 14 percent. Arizona was at 10 percent. Nobody else was higher than 9 percent.

That is a MASSIVE gap in personnel usage, and they followed that up this offseason by adding another tight end into the mix early in the draft.

It makes sense.

Defenses have spent the better part of the past decade getting smaller and faster to try and counter the high-octane passing games that took over the league. That was a progression defenses had to make when offenses started throwing over base defenses and players built to stop the run.

What is the next progression after that?

Offenses getting bigger and stronger again to overpower the smaller and faster defenses.

The Rams were wildly effective with it last season, building the No. 1 offense in the league in both yards and points by overwhelming teams three tight end looks. They were also extremely effective out of that look.

I also wonder if other teams around the league have already caught on to it.

There were 22 tight ends taken in the draft, making it the first time since 2009 that more than 20 were taken in a single year. That include nine taken in the first three rounds. There were only 15 taken in 2025. Just 12 in 2024.

The game is evolving. Again.

6. The most talented player in the draft, in my non-expert view, was Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love. He was the best player I saw in college football a year ago, and honestly thought he should have won the Heisman Trophy. Every game I saw he popped and was a threat to score every time he touched the football no matter where it was on the field.

He has a chance to be a superstar in the NFL.

He very well might be that for the Arizona Cardinals, the team that took him with the No. 3 overall pick.

And I still think Arizona made the wrong pick.

It is all about positional value and the process in building your team.

You don’t start with a running back. You don’t make the running back the focal point. The running back is the final piece of the puzzle, not the first.

Love is only the third running back to go in the top-three over the past 20 years, and the previous two players — Saquon Barkley and Trent Richardson — didn’t exactly bring much success to their teams. And Barkley is actually a great argument for why Arizona may have gotten this all wrong.

Barkley was an objectively great player for the New York Giants. He was an immediate star and impact player. But because the rest of the team was so awful around him, and because they did not have the other necessary pieces to win, they never really won anything during his tenure. The only reason it all clicked for him and the Philadelphia Eagles was because the Eagles already had all of the other pieces in place.

You need the offensive line. You need the quarterback and passing game. You need a defense.

The Cardinals, at this point, have literally none of these things.

Love is going to be great. The team is going to stink. And the Cardinals likely missed a chance to add a player at a position that could have made a bigger impact in turning things around.

It is easier for a contending team to find a good running back than it is for a bad team to build around a running back.

Honestly, Seattle taking Love’s college teammate (Jadarian Price) with the No. 32 overall pick is far more sensible to me even though he is not quite as good of a prospect.

7. Getting back to quarterbacks again, we are already hearing about how the 2027 class is going to be the better quarterback class. Which comes one year after we heard about how the 2026 quarterback class was going to be better than the 2025 quarterback class.

My advice: Do not listen to any of this and count on your team finding its quarterback next year, because projecting how these quarterback classes are going to pan out is all just guesswork.

The top quarterback in this year’s class (Fernando Mendoza) was not even on the radar as a top pick a year ago. All of the guys that were mostly flopped. We are working on our second straight year of “next year’s quarterback class headlined by Arch Manning” is going to be better.

Maybe it will be. We have no idea right now.

8. I have no real opinion on Mel Kiper, but I do get why ESPN makes a big deal out of him because he is a big reason why the NFL Draft is a mainstream event. I am not saying it would not have organically reached this point over the years without him (because it very well might have given the monster that the NFL is), but in his world it has always been this big of a deal and he helped make everybody else feel the same way.