Add the Steelers to the list of teams to have their first-round pick under contract. Pittsburgh agreed to terms with defensive lineman Derrick Harmonon Wednesday, NFL.com’s Tom Pelissero notes.
Harmon’s rookie pact, as the No. 21 overall pick, will run through 2028. The Steelers will have a fifth-year option on the contract, one the team must exercise by May 2028. The Oregon alum will be tied to a fully guaranteed $17.97MM deal. Harmon is the first D-lineman the Steelers have drafted in Round 1 since Cameron Heyward in 2011.
While the Steelers will pair Heyward and Harmon this season, the Oregon prospect profiles as one the team will hope anchors the D-line after Heyward retires. Two seasons remain on Heyward’s deal, though no guarantees are in place beyond 2025. Heyward is heading into his age-36 season; Harmon will not turn 22 until August.
Viewed as a clear landing spot for either Jaxson Dart or Shedeur Sanders, the Steelers instead fortified a D-line by adding a first-rounder alongside Heyward and 2023 second-rounder Keeanu Benton. The Giants were leery of the Steelers’ QB need at No. 21, but New York’s front office expected Pittsburgh to pass. This led to Big Blue trading up (via the Texans) at No. 25 for Dart, a player the Steelers are believed to have graded as a first-round talent.
Harmon put up career-best numbers during his one season at Oregon. The Michigan State transfer posted five sacks, 11 tackles for loss and two forced fumbles, helping the Ducks to the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff. The 311-pounder’s quickness and power make him a menace inside the tackles, but he also showed the ability to line up outside. Although Heyward played sparingly as a rookie 14 years ago, the Steelers will likely turn to Harmon as an immediate regular along their D-line.
This signing wraps the Steelers’ draft class contracts. Here is how Pittsburgh’s class looks heading into OTAs:
Photo by Brandon Sloter/Image Of Sport/Getty Images
The Steelers’ 2025 rookie class is now under contract.
The Steelers’ entire 2025 rookie class is now under contract.
Per a report from NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, the Pittsburgh Steelers have signed 21st overall pick Derrick Harmon to his rookie deal. The contract is four years, $17,973,604, and fully-guaranteed. And like all first-round contracts, it’ll come with a fifth-year option.
The #Steelers agreed to terms with No. 21 pick Derrick Harmon on his four-year, $17,973,604 fully guaranteed contract.
Of 32 first-round picks, 20 have already signed with training camp still two months away. pic.twitter.com/bjKvhS7IBh
Harmon played for the Oregon Ducks in 2024, recording 45 total tackles, five sacks, and two forced fumbles. The 6’4, 313-pound defender had the most quarterback pressures of any college defensive tackle last season, per PFF.
Harmon joins fellow Steelers draftees Kaleb Johnson, Jack Sawyer, Yahya Black, Will Howard, Carson Bruener, and Donte Kent as under-contract players.
The Steelers’ OTAs are scheduled to begin May 27. Training camp is expected to kick off in late July.
The Steelers have added some offensive line depth Wednesday. Per a team announcement, Pittsburgh has signed offensive guard Nick Broeker to a one-year deal.
The details of the contract have yet to be announced.
We have signed G Nick Broeker to a one-year contract. @BordasLaw
Broeker was drafted in the seventh round of the 2023 NFL Draft by the Buffalo Bills. He’s spent most of his career with the Houston Texans, appearing in 12 career games.
Matt LaFleur believes Aaron Rodgers is Pittsburgh bound
As we get closer and closer to the month of June and closer to mandatory minicamp, the anticipation of the Aaron Rodgers to Pittsburgh expectations and rumors continue to grow and grow.
Rodgers is heavily expected to sign with the Steelers ahead of that mandatory minicamp mark of the offseason, so these next few weeks will certainly be days when the news could break at any point. And it isn’t just the media that expects Rodgers to be a Steeler; it’s head coaches, as well. Specifically, Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur. Joining Up & Adams, LaFleur says that, while neither Mike Tomlin nor Arthur Smith has reached out to him to ask any Rodgers-centric questions, he expects that Rodgers will be a Steeler.
“I’m pretty sure they know what they’re doing,” LaFleur said. “I’m sure they’re confident in what they’re doing. I would fully expect him to be a Pittsburgh Steeler.”
Has Mike Tomlin asked Coach Matt Lafleur about Aaron Rodgers???
Rodgers played under LaFleur from 2019-22, where the duo led the Packers to three consecutive 13-3 seasons from 2019-21. Rodgers also won two MVPs with LaFleur as his head coach. It’s certainly not nothing that LaFleur would go out of his way to say he expects his former quarterback to head to Pittsburgh.
New Orleans rebuffed those overtures and doubled down on their commitment to the 2022 first-rounder by picking up his fifth-year option. That will keep Olave under contract through the 2026 season, during which he will earn a fully-guaranteed $15.5MM.
Installing a new coaching staff tends to lead to player turnover as the roster is evaluated for fit with the incoming scheme. Between that and Olave’s down year in 2024, the Browns and the Steelers may have thought they could swoop in for a bargain.
However, the Saints declined to engage in trade talks for the 24-year-old wideout. That could be because new head coach Kellen Moore and offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier see a major role for Olave in their passing attack. It could also be due to Olave’s lower trade value coming off a 400-yard season after he eclipsed 1,000 yards in each of his first two.
Picking up Olave’s fifth-year option indicates that the Saints believe he can bounce back in 2025, though he will have to adjust to a new coaching staff and a new quarterback, likely rookie Tyler Shough. If Olave returns to his top-25 production, he should be in line for an extension with a substantial raise next offseason.
The league’s best offensive lineman will now be honored at the end of the season.
NFL Honors will look a bit different in the upcoming season with the introduction of the “Protector of the Year” award.
The NFL is introducing the Protector of the Year Award given to the league’s best offensive lineman, as decided by a panel that includes a number of former OL greats.
Troy Vincent gives credit to Bills OL Dion Dawkins and Andrew Whitworth for pushing this idea.
The new award, the league announced, is to honor the season’s best offensive lineman — a position group always left out of the MVP and Offensive Player of the Year discussion.
The “Protector of the Year” honor was pushed by Bills offensive tackle Dion Dawkins and former Rams and Bengals offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth. Per ESPN’s Brooke Pryor, the voting panel for the award will include former NFL “greats” at offensive line.
The Steelers haven’t had an elite offensive line for several seasons, but the team would’ve had strong candidates for the award in the past. Most recently, former Pittsburgh offensive linemen Maurkice Pouncey and David DeCastro were each two-time first-team All-Pros.
Pittsburgh does have a rising star currently on the offensive line, with center Zach Frazier being named to the Pro Football Writers of America’s all-rookie team following his performance last season.
At an NFL owner’s meeting May 21, the Green Bay Packers’ proposal to ban the play did not receive enough votes to pass, meaning perhaps the most controversial play in the league will stay in the playbook for another season.
Steelers president Art Rooney II had previously said he supported banning the tush push, but when the Eagles updated the wording with language that seemed to ban even more than just the play, the odds of it passing seemed to drop even lower.
Another rule change proposal to re-seed the playoffs by record following the Wild Card round was never even voted on, with the Lions interestingly withdrawing the proposal the day of the meeting.
That’s likely good news for Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, who said he was a “division purist” in March when critiquing an earlier version of the proposed change.
Once change did pass, though. Teams can now declare an onside kick at any point in the game when playing from behind (last year this was only allowed in the fourth quarter).
Onside kicks will now be kicked from the 34 yard line instead of the 35; the rest of the kicking team will still line up at the 35 yard line, with the hope that the recovery rate will go slightly up in 2025.
The Steelers legend sees a down season coming for Pittsburgh
Even though Ben Roethlisberger has been retired since the end of the 2021 season, but hasn’t gone too far from the football world. Steelers fans continue to get their dose of No. 7 through his podcast Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger, where current and former Steelers frequently join the two-time Super Bowl champion.
On the show’s latest episode, Roethlisberger broke down the Steelers’ schedule and gave his record predictions with a slight caveat. Big Ben predicts that the Steelers will have a losing record if Aaron Rodgers doesn’t join Pittsburgh, but has them outperforming their 2024 season if Rodgers does sign.
“I have us 7-10 without Aaron, and I have us 11-6 with Aaron,” Roethlisberger said.
Will the Steelers suffer a losing record without Aaron Rodgers?
Some may see this as a slight dig at the Steelers’ current quarterback room, specifically Mason Rudolph. That said, there clearly wasn’t any malicious intent with Roethlisberger’s predictions. Rather, he recognizes the difference between a future Hall of Fame quarterback and a career backup being on the field.
If and when Rodgers does join the Steelers, their ceiling instantly gets raised, as does their floor. If Rudolph is the starter, the ceiling is very low, frankly speaking.
Rodgers is coming off a season in which he threw 28 touchdown passes and 11 interceptions with 3,897 yards passing. Rudolph threw nine touchdowns and nine interceptions in eight games and five starts with the Tennessee Titans in 2024.
(From Penn Live’s Nick Farabaugh): The Cincinnati Bengals are hosting former Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Montravius Adams for a visit on Monday. This is Adams’ first visit since his release from the Steelers following the NFL Draft.
Adams spent four seasons in Pittsburgh from 2021-24. Over that span, he started 21 games and recorded 72 total tackles, one sack, and six tackles for loss. Released on April 28, the eight-year veteran is now looking for his fourth NFL team.
The Steelers cut Adams presumably to give him a better shot at making a roster elsewhere after drafting two defensive linemen in the 2025 NFL Draft. The Bengals defense was bottom-10 in the league in both points and yards last season.
(From Steelers.com’s Teresa Varley): “My dad is a football junkie,” said Sawyer. “Ever since I was little, I would be watching games with my dad. I’d be throwing the football when I was one, two years old, watching games with him on the couch. He said he could tell from an early age that I had a love for the game. I think it started with watching football together on television every Saturday and Sunday and always dreaming about having a chance to do what I’m able to do now. It’s just hard to explain.”
In the feature, Sawyer talks about his belief that games are decided by a handful of plays. That philosophy, combined with Sawyer’s film study and nonstop motor, explain his knack for creating clutch plays during his time with Ohio State. It’s also a big reason why the Steelers drafted him.
(From NFL.com’s Kevin Patra): “I feel like I’m a versatile back. I could be a Derrick Henry back, or I could be a Dalvin Cook back,” Johnson recently told the team’s official website. “And I feel like that’s what separates me from a lot of backs in the league and in this class that I came into because I just feel like, you know, overall. I feel like I’m a fast back, and I could be a strong back, also catch the ball in the backfield and be reliable.”
(From NFL.com’s Grant Gordon): NFL owners passed a resolution, 32-0, on Tuesday at the Spring League Meeting that will allow league players to try out to participate in flag football during the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. A maximum of one player from each team will be allowed to participate and each club’s designated international player is also permitted to take part for his country.
The next Summer Olympics will be July 14-30, 2028. That will certainly overlap with portions of training camp, and the NFL is working on details regarding injury possibilities, playing conditions, and salary implications. There are a lot of hurdles left to clear, but allowing NFL participation in Olympic flag football is a massive marketing opportunity for the league that will not impact most of its players.
Of course, there’s the question of how well NFL players will transition to flag football. Yes, they are the best football players in the world, but flag football is an entirely different sport. There’s far less physicality and it’s a game built almost entirely on speed and agility; instead of breaking tackles, you have to make sure your flag doesn’t get pulled.
That means the NFL players on the team won’t necessarily be a 1:1 replica of the All-Pro roster.
As for how the game looks, I’d recommend checking out some highlights from past international flag football matchups. It doesn’t look like the NFL. The field is 70 yards long and 25 yards wide, including 10-yard end zones. The offense is composed of one quarterback, three receivers, and one running back, while the defense has one designated rusher and four defensive backs in coverage.
Scoring and downs are a bit different, too. You can check out the Olympic rulebook here for all the details.
Which Steeler would make the Olympic flag football team?
Right now, the Steelers don’t seem like a team that would have a frontrunner for Team USA’s Olympic flag football squad, but in three years that might be different. On the Pittsburgh roster right now, Calvin Austin III and his blazing 4.32 speed is an obvious choice.
However, my top pick would probably be safety Minkah Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick is a great athlete himself, and he’s played plenty of single-high safety in the NFL on a field that’s 53 yards wide — 25 would be even easier. Plus, with 20 interceptions and four touchdowns over his career, he’s a proven playmaker.
If you have some time to kill, I’d also love to hear your thoughts on what a 10-man flag football team of NFL players would look like this season. What about a team of all-time Steelers?
What are your thoughts on NFL players in Olympic flag football? Join the BTSC community and let us know in the comments below!
B) You’re looking down the barrel of this 2025 season, wracked with anxiety about whether there will even be any good quarterbacks available for the Steelers in the draft, let alone if they will have the necessary pick to secure them. Unfortunately, I also count myself among you. We’ll get through this together.
C) You think it’s dumb to talk about the 2026 Draft just one month after the 2025 Draft. I disagree, but I get it, and hope I can provide you with some info and observations you’ll be able to use over the next 11 months.
Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
Regardless of which type you are, there is no underselling how important next year’s draft in Pittsburgh will be for the home team. Finding a player that can stabilize the quarterback room will not only impact the next several years for the organization, but it will also impact the legacies of everyone from decision makers like Mike Tomlin and Omar Khan, to players still searching for a playoff victory like T.J. Watt and Minkah Fitzpatrick.
That’s why I plan to follow along with the college football season and provide you with updated temperature reads on which quarterbacks are trending towards being first-round picks. With the college football season roughly 94 days away, the next several weeks seem like the perfect time to start familiarizing ourselves with the quarterbacks who could declare for the draft in 2026.
But, as a lifelong sports fan, I know how easy it is for biases against certain players — or more often, schools/teams — to cloud our judgment when it comes to talent evaluation. If the NFL Draft has taught us anything over the years, it’s that projecting quarterback success isn’t an exact science.
Entering their final year of college ball, neither Joe Burrow nor Jayden Daniels were considered a player who would hear their name called early on Night 1 of the draft. The same could be said of this year’s first overall pick, Cam Ward. After his 2023 season at Washington State University, Ward was advised he would not be considered a Day 1 prospect in the 2024 draft, so he made the wise decision to head back for one last year of school.
Meanwhile, Trevor Lawrence was considered a generational, can’t-miss type of player, yet he hasn’t fully lived up to the potential we all envisioned for him so far. Caleb Williams didn’t have quite the same hype as Lawrence, but his debut season was bumpier than many anticipated.
Matthew O’Haren-Imagn Images
That’s why I wanted to find a way to present these players to you blind, at least initially, for this exercise. I want to combat those biases in you, the readers, as well as the ones I know I hold for some of these quarterbacks.
There’s also the issue that this class is marked by uncertainty. That’s not entirely unique this time of year, but it will mark the second straight class without a definitive frontrunner at quarterback.
Of the 15 quarterbacks I will profile in this series, only six are seniors or grad-transfers in the final year of their eligibility. The rest are all underclassmen who possess traits that could make them high picks if paired with an exceptional 2025 season, but who could just as easily decide they need one more year of seasoning before going pro.
And yes, that includes the quarterback prospect with the famous family and only two career starts. You know the one.
Brett Davis-Imagn Images
Add in that, generally speaking, we know only a handful of these quarterbacks will end up being worthy of a first-round grade. A class with three or more quarterbacks taken in the first is not always a given, as we just saw with the most recent draft class.
With all of those factors to consider, I knew contextualizing this crop of quarterbacks in a way that was equally informative and entertaining was not going to be an easy task.
But that’s when I had an idea.
While I’m certainly an NFL Draft nerd, I also have an interest in pop culture, including from eras before my time. While this may be the result of my childhood home having TV Land included in our television package, as I thought about how I wanted to talk about this group, I was reminded of the old game show The Dating Game.
First airing in 1965, The Dating Game had iterations air sporadically across the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, as well as a short-lived celebrity version that ran as recently as 2021. For those who have forgotten or weren’t alive when the show was at its peak in popularity, the show has a pretty simple premise: three contestants are hidden behind a barrier that allows their voices to be heard but keeps them out of sight from the person who will be interviewing them. That person takes turns asking each contestant questions about themselves, and then by the end of the show, they pick one to go on a “date” with.
Over the years, the show would include everything from regular folks, to pre-breakout celebrities such as Farah Fawcett and Arnold Schwarzenegger and even, infamously, a man who would go on to be convicted as a serial killer.
All of that’s to say, like this quarterback class, The Dating Game featured a mixed bag of characters.
With that in mind, I will be periodically releasing entries in this series over the next several weeks, leading up to the kickoff of the 2025 college football season. I’ve identified 15 quarterbacks that are either commonly discussed as potential first-round picks or that I think could rise to that level with a strong 2025 performance.
Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
While I hope to make a fun game out of obscuring their identities when I present them, I see no reason to hide that quarterback list from you now if you wish to get started on your own research. Leading up to the start of the college football season, I will present the cases for the following players, in no particular order or ranking:
During this series, I will try to keep my own biases in check about certain players — like Klubnik (positive) and Beck (negative) — as I present to you the positives and negatives about their football journeys so far. Each entry in the series will feature three signal callers whose identities will be initially withheld and then revealed at the end of the article.
This is where I’ll need your help. With each entry, I’ll need you, the audience, to vote in the poll at the end of each article and sound off in the comments to pick the “winner” from each installment. Then, before the first college game of the season, I’ll do a film breakdown of the five winners in our series and do one last vote to determine which player the BTSC readership is favoring in August. If nothing else, it’ll be fun to revisit after the season and see how good we were at determining which quarterbacks we’ll be talking about next spring.
The draft is just 337 away and counting, Steelers Nation. It’s time to get to work.
Harmon’s rookie pact, as the No. 21 overall pick, will run through 2028. The Steelers will have a fifth-year option on the contract, one the team must exercise by May 2028. The Oregon alum will be tied to a fully guaranteed $17.97MM deal. Harmon is the first D-lineman the Steelers have drafted in Round 1 since Cameron Heyward in 2011.
