Obvious as it was for the 2021 season, Kendrick Green had no business being the Pittsburgh Steelers center. A rookie who primarily played guard in college snapping to an 18-year vet like QB Ben Roethlisberger and tasked with replacing Maurkice Pouncey, Green should’ve been on the sidelines. That’s not outside conjecture. Looking back, that’s how Mike Tomlin and Green himself felt.

Appearing on Brieden Fehoko’s podcast Tuesday evening, Green revisited his difficult first year in the league.

“I was in way over my head as a rookie,” Green told Fehoko.

Green was one of two Steelers’ rookie linemen to start the year as Pittsburgh hit a hard reset on the decade-long group consisting of David DeCastro, Ramon Foster, Pouncey, and others. The 2022 group was cobbled together through free agent signings and draft picks. Dan Moore Jr. at left tackle, Trai Turner at right guard, Green at center.

Green’s struggles were quickly evident. His lack of size created matchup issues against bigger nose tackles. Coming off a vet like Pouncey, Green acknowledged the offense ran through the center, putting additional pressure on Green to make line calls. Leaving him little time to think about how to block anyone.

“I’m telling everybody what to do…I’m like, how do I block this dude?” Green said. “What’s my technique? I’m spinning. I think looking back, I had no business being out there as a rookie. I was not ready.”

Green admitted backup J.C. Hassenauer was “way more qualified” to play than him. By year’s end, Hassenauer took over for Green, including for the team’s Wild Card loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

While Green was chided by fans in the public sphere, Tomlin was critical of the coaching staff internally.

“I’m in a team meeting every week. ‘KG we gotta get this, this cleaned up, yada yada, yada. I’m not no line coach, [o-line coach Adrian Klemm], fix that shit,’” Green said of Tomlin’s message. “It would be just that. He would literally say that. ‘I’m not a line coach, Klemm, that shit needs to be fixed yesterday.’”

Throughout the interview, Green was careful to call out then-offensive line coach Adrian Klemm, but he made it clear Klemm didn’t help develop his game and taught techniques that simply didn’t work. Klemm didn’t even last one full season with the team, leaving to take a job at Oregon before the year concluded.

Comparatively, Green praised Aaron Kromer, his o-line coach in Buffalo for the 2025 season. Kromer retired this offseason with former Steelers’ offensive line coach Pat Meyer replacing him.

The following year, the Steelers signed veteran Mason Cole, sending Green to the bench. He didn’t play a snap his sophomore season and by his third year, the team was moving on.

After dabbling at fullback in training camp, the Steelers traded Green to the Houston Texans ahead of roster cutdowns for a sixth round pick. Getting the news he was on the move, Tomlin admitted the truth.

“He told me when they traded me, ‘We probably didn’t put you in the best position to develop,’” he told Green. “But he said, ‘So what? This is your career, not mine. You gotta figure this shit out. Go live that life.’”

Blunt as that message was, and as angry as Green admitted he was in the moment, he told Fehoko he appreciated Tomlin’s honesty and transparency.

“I’ll never have anything bad to say about him,” Green said of Tomlin.

Though Green hasn’t been a Steeler for several years, his story is one worth knowing for the future. Players who aren’t put in position to succeed or rushed into action are often doomed to fail.

Even in the best of circumstances, Green might not have become Pittsburgh’s next great center. But the team forced him into a role he wasn’t ready for and did nothing to develop him along the way. Cardinal sins of coaching that can’t be ignored, ones that Tomlin and the rest of the staff wear.