The Pittsburgh Steelers were on the phone with WR Makai Lemon, planning to select him with the No. 21 pick in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft when the Philadelphia Eagles traded up to No. 20 with the Dallas Cowboys to select Lemon. On ESPN’s The Pick Is In, footage of the Cowboys’ draft room was shown when making the deal to move down.

In the clip, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones asks who the best candidates to move up are, when someone in the draft room suggests Philadelphia. Stephen Jones waits for Howie Roseman to call to try and get more draft capital and finalized the deal, sending pick No. 23 as well as No. 114 and No. 137 in the fourth round for No. 20 and a 2027 seventh-round pick.

Jones waited for Roseman to call instead of calling Roseman, as the Cowboys thought they could get the two fourth-round picks from Philadelphia rather than just a sixth-round pick had they initiated the call.

Meanwhile, Omar Khan (the show inexplicably spelled his name wrong, pouring salt into the wound) was on the phone with Lemon when he was interrupted by a phone call from Howie Roseman. That clip has been out for over a week now, but we now get to see what happened in the war rooms leading up to the moment.

The Steelers wound up selecting OT Max Iheanachor with the No. 21 pick. After the trade, there was a report by Dallas beat writer Nick Harris (which both teams denied) that the Steelers weren’t happy with the Cowboys for trading down. Of course, Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy and some members of his staff were coaches in Dallas, so there is a connection between the two sides, and it was surprising to see Dallas make a move with their in-division rival.

This clip likely doesn’t give the full scope of how everything went down (and if it does, making trades in the NFL is almost as painless as doing so in Madden), but it does show that the Cowboys were looking to move off the pick.

Given the Cowboys had traded up one pick earlier in the night to select SAF Caleb Downs, it isn’t shocking that they looked to move down. They ended up taking EDGE Malachi Lawrence with the No. 24 pick, and Harris had said that the Cowboys were planning on taking Lawrence if they had stuck at No. 20. The documentary confirmed that the Cowboys would target Lawrence at No. 20 if they held the pick. Getting two fourth-round picks was a solid haul for Dallas, and unfortunately for the Steelers, it came at the expense of their draft target and the top receiver still on the board.

Jones explained in the documentary that the team wanted to trade down and still end up with an EDGE rusher, so it was a matter of how far they’d be willing to move down.

“We were actually trying to get some more picks, we were betting that the players that we had in mind that we could afford to move down some, and 1 or 2 of a group of four players be there.”

The Steelers wound up getting their receiver on Day 2, trading up for Alabama’s Germie Bernard. While the optics of calling Lemon only for him to wind up in Philly weren’t and still aren’t great, the Steelers wound up with an offensive tackle with a high ceiling and a good slot receiver who fits Mike McCarthy’s offense in Bernard.

Fair or not, Lemon and Iheanachor will likely be compared for years to come as a result of this, but the Steelers could wind up winners in the long run with a potential franchise offensive tackle.