Just a few days ago, the Pittsburgh Steelers kicked off their 2026 season with an impressively lopsided 28-9 victory over the Green Bay Packers. While we must acknowledge that neither team featured its star players, nor the type of playcalling we can expect once the games start to count for real, it’s also hard to introduce yourself to a new fanbase in a more impressive fashion than Mike McCarthy and his staff did on Thursday night.

This is going to be quite a meaty post with several clips to share and examine, so let’s not beat around the bush. The following are highlights and lowlights of my impressions from the game. If any of these clips inspire some curiosity, or if you have any insights to add to the conversation, remember to get down in the comments section and join the conversation.

There’s going to be a lot of positives we’ll look at from this game, so let’s start off with a dose of negativity before we wash things down with what went well.

The Steelers offensive line got off to a tough start on Thursday before settling in once both teams’ reserves took over. Collectively, the Steelers allowed 10 pressures and 3 sacks in pass protection. Four of those pressures were at the hands of the starting lineup — Troy Fautanu (2), Mason McCormick (1), and Dylan Cook (1) — and a fifth pressure was credited to running back Travis Homer, who started the game with both Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle in street clothes for this game. The rushing attack managed just 2.7 yards per carry. And Fautanu was tagged for both a false start penalty and an offensive holding call.

It certainly wasn’t a pristine showing for the unit.

If you’re looking for reasons to soften that showing, there are explanations/excuses that could be made. For starters, the 10 pressures sound worse than it was because on a couple of plays, multiple pressures were allowed, meaning it wasn’t 10 plays that resulted in pressure, just a few really bad snaps. There is also the bit about Fautanu, McCormick, and Cook all flipping to the opposite side from where they played in 2025. A few bumps and bruises were to be expected. And perhaps most important to remember each year: this was the first preseason game of the year. Preseason games exist to ramp up for the season physically and to iron out mental mistakes. The Steelers by no means should be satisfied with this performance, but these issues will matter much more if they linger into the first month of the season. Still, it’s better to make these mistakes now while there is still time to adjust.

Here are the three sacks Pittsburgh allowed in the game:

This first sack is a comedy of errors, a true team sack. Fautanu and Homer are the two main culprits on the play, but aren’t all that goes wrong here.

We’ll start with Fautanu, who isn’t able to get deep enough quickly enough. His defender is out wide of tight end Darnell Washington, who himself is running a route. Fautaun kicks off, but doesn’t get enough depth for how wide and fast the Packers edge player is. Fautanu’s hips flip to the point that his outside hip is parallel with the quarterback, never a good sign. He doesn’t have enough power from this position to fully displace the pass rusher off his path to the quarterback, but to Fautanu’s credit, he is able to widen the rush enough that Mason Rudolph had a chance to climb and slide out to his left if there hadn’t also been other failures in the Steelers’ pass protection.

Homer is the second biggest culprit on this play. He isn’t in a good base when he meets the blitzing linebacker and is immediately rocked back onto his heels. Unfortunately, he gets driven back at the exact moment that Rudolph tries to climb the pocket, and Homer ends up right in his quarterback’s lap. This sends Homer further off balance and causes Rudolph to pull the ball down and awkwardly try to shuffle his feet with no space to move. This is only worsened when a Packer (55) coming on a delayed stunt violently throws himself into this cluster, causing Rudolph to further stumble and lose all chance of regaining his feet to reset his throw.

I’m not positive of their blocking assignments, so I won’t critique either of the guards here, but I will note that the stunting Packer (55) goes unpicked up. Intuitively, I would assume Spencer Anderson (74) would have been the best to pick that up, be he first double-teams a defender with Zach Fraizer, and then picks up the defender who initially engaged with McCormick before countering inside.

Likewise, I won’t be critical of Rudolph here because I don’t know how he’s coached to go through his progressions on this play. Watching it in the All-22 view, it seems obvious that Germie Bernard gets open fairly quickly in the middle, right in the space vacated by the blitzing linebackers, but Rudolph appears to be reading the left side of the field first on this play. That could be what the play called for, and the pass blocking by Homer speeds his process up and makes the pocket messy quickly. Just a bad play that I’m sure will be discussed in this week’s meetings.

Sack number two isn’t too complicated. Cook simple gets beat here. The routes are too long developing to get away with how quickly Cook gives this pressure up. Again, the two players who maybe are open enough to try a quick throw — Homer in the flat and Roman Wilson running a hook route that would definitely have been contested — were on the opposite side of the field from where Rudolph’s progression starts, so it’s hard to pin this on the quarterback without knowing exactly what was called. The Steelers did have the numbers advantage on the right half of the field, so it makes sense that Rudolph’s eyes were there.

The final sack of the game feels like some sort of communication bust. Watching it live, it was easy to blame Broderick Jones for this one. Again, without knowing the exact blocking assignments on the play, it’s tough to speak definitively, but you never like to see a free rusher come screaming off the edge virtually untouched. Was this Howard failing to identify that rusher as a hot read? Was this Jones misunderstanding his assignment? He goes to help guard Brock Hoffman on a double team that doesn’t look necessary on tape, but the Packers front could have led to some of the confusion. Green Bay placed eight defenders on the line of scrimmage with two linebackers lining up in a double mug look — one on each shoulder of the center — and the Steelers might have believed there would be some stunts Jones would need to help with and that the defensive back on the edge was bluffing.

Howard seemed ready to roll to his right quickly, so it’s possible this was also part of their design, but if so, I don’t like that there was only one route runner running to that side of the field, and in a concept that would have them trailing well behind the quarterback. Bernard was potentially open for a pass, but only a quarterback with elite arm talent and velocity would have been able to contort their body and pull that off. Howard likely made the right choice not to attempt it on this play; remember it’s usually inadvisable for a quarterback to throw across their body and in the opposite direction from where their body’s momentum is pulling them. Green Bay had a trailing defender underneath Bernard ready to jump the route on a pass attempt, and another over the top of him that could have made a play if the pass was sailed errantly or tipped up.

I won’t dive too much into the run game. The Steelers had a handful of decent runs, but plenty that ended up getting stuffed too, which is why they had such a low yards per carry average. But I will leave this section on a positive note with this 11-yard draw play that worked well.

Impressive night for the young signal callers

The game might have started bumpy for the Steelers, but the tides began to shift as soon as Will Howard and the second unit entered the game. Howard and rookie Drew Allar didn’t face nearly as much pressure from the Green Bay defense, and both looked poised and decisive. The two combined to go 17-of-22 passing and 239 yards. Howard led a touchdown drive in an impressive two-minute drill before halftime, and Allar accounted for three total touchdowns, two through the air and a three-yard touchdown on a second-and-goal option run.

Yes, it’s good to keep in mind that both the Steelers’ young gunslingers were facing backups and mostly vanilla defensive coverages. The latter is especially true for Allar, who faced relatively minimal pressure all night compared to his two teammates.

Mike McCarthey was also keeping it fairly simple for his young passers. Anyone who’s played a game of Madden or EA Sports College Football should be familiar with much of the designs that were being drawn up. But that in and of itself should be a breath of fresh air for Steelers fans. I found myself giddy as McCarthy deployed some of the basic passing concepts of the West Coast offense, with Howard and Allar executing them at a high level.

That included 11 play-action calls, which worked effectively despite the rather unimpressive run game from the Steelers.

Seriously, look at this spacing!

I was ultimately most impressed by Allar on the night, but I have to tip my cap to Will Howard, who was also making his preseason debut after missing last preseason due to injury. Howard doesn’t possess the same physical traits that pop off the screen for Allar, but Howard was impressive in his own right. He is clearly more mobile than Rudolph, and I’d argue he showed that he navigates the pocket better and has better touch on his passes too. Howard doesn’t have a big arm, which I do think limits the ceiling of his potential. Still, if his first showing was any indication, Howard could make a long career with his poise, moxie, and ability to execute the playbook.

But as good as Howard looked, it was hard not to be more excited by what we saw from Allar. I have gone on the record as an Allar skeptic, and perhaps that is why I came away so impressed. Again, McCarthy wasn’t asking Allar to do anyting to complicated, but what we saw from Allar in college and in practices up to this point was a passer capable of making the jaw-droppingly difficult throws, but whose mechanics could make him frustratingly mangle what should be the easy plays in an offense. Yet on Thursday — albeit with mostly clean pockets and against defenders who are fighting for roster spots — Allar looked calm, collected, and hit his layups.

Take this play below. It’s a staple of the West Coast offense that McCarthy’s playbook has evolved from. On the left side of the field where Allar is reading, the Steelers are running a concept commonly referred to as Dragon. That concept combines a quick slant from the outside receiver with another inside receiver running a flat route. The offense can get to that flat route from a variety of looks, whether that’s a tight end on the line, a running back, a slot receiver, or a player who is motioning to that side of the field in motion. Here, it’s just a simple slot receiver with no windown dressing before the snap.

With the linebacker on that side of the field rushing the passer, and the outside cornerback playing well off the line, the read is a simple one for Allar. He just has to see what the defensive back in the slot does and react accordingly. When the defender breaks on the defender in the flat, Allar knows that his outside receiver will spring open behind them on the slant. He just needs to get the ball there on time and placed well for the receiver. That hasn’t always been a guarantee for Allar, so seeing him execute this is an encouraging first step. If I’m nitpicking, I think he could have placed the ball slightly more in front of the receiver to help them catch it in stride and turn upfield more easily for even more yards after the catch, but this is still a positive play.

Allar was able to do this the entire game. He slightly misplaced a potential touchdown ball to fellow rookie Riley Nowakowski at one point in the game, but then came back later and made the easy throw you expect him to make to finish off a drive with a score.

And of course, there was the highlight of the night. On Allar’s first pass attempt in the NFL, the Steelers run the Levels concept — a series of in-breaking routes on one side of the field at different depths to cause stress on the defense — and Allar rips a fastball to fellow rookie Kaden Wetjen, who got away with a push-off and was off to the races.

I’m not ready to fit Howard and Allar for their Hall of Fame or even Ring of Honor jackets just yet, but you have to be impressed with this first showing. All you can ask from them at this point in their careers is to step up to the plate and meet the challenges placed before them. There will be tougher challenges ahead. Here’s hoping they keep rising to the occasion.

Rookie class has a good night

We’ve already highlighted Allar, Wetjen, and Nowakowski making plays, but it was a strong showing for most members of the Steelers rookies on Thursday.

Outside of Allar, perhaps no rookie impressed as much as second-round receiver Germie Bernard.

Bernard moved around the formation, lining up 12 times in the slot and 16 times out wide. Of those, he lined up on the left side of the formation nine times and on the right 19 times. The rookie from Alabama hauled in four of his five targets for 51 yards, racking up 30 yards after the catch.

It will be interesting to see what the Steelers receiver rotation will look like once the regular season gets underway. DK Metcalf and Michael Pittman Jr. should dominate the snaps in two-receiver sets, but McCarthy has favored 11-personnel over the years. Roman Wilson has been dominating those reps in training camp, but Bernard impressed this week while Wilson was once again relatively quiet once game day rolled around. Could that be because it was the first preseason game and the Steelers aren’t trying to show their hand? Or perhaps it was merely because Wilson has more chemistry with Aaron Rodgers and Bernard has more with the backup quarterbacks? Either way, it’s a good problem for the Steelers to have, and Bernard looks like he’s going to challenge this coaching staff for more playing time soon rather than later.

It was also an impressive first showing for Gabe Rubio. When Rubio was selected in round six, many rushed to call the pick a reach. It’s hard to blame anyone who reacted this way. After all, Rubio had very little written about him in the pre-draft process; finding any clips of him online was a difficult task, and he missed much of the 2025 season with injury. On top of that, as a nose tackle in college, it’s not like he was playing a role that allowed him to stuff the box score with easily digestible stats to display his worth.

On Thursday, Rubio started to show why his case for making the 53-man roster might be stronger than was initially anticipated.

Rubio played 21 snaps and finished with six tackles (four solo, two assisted) and three Stops, which is a PFF stat that measures tackles that result in a “failure” for the offense. The 6’5, 321-pound lineman out of Notre Dame also showed his versatility, playing nine snaps at nose tackle, seven snaps on the left side of the line, and five on the right.

Rookie safety Robert Spears-Jennings also made a couple of impressive plays around the line of scrimmage.

And lastly, rookie corner Daylen Everette also had a decent, if unspectacular, night in coverage. He allowed two catches on three targets for 23 yards, but made four tackles and registered two Stops. He played mostly off coverage, trying to keep plays in front of him, and I came away thinking he’d likely be challenged more frequently by an opposing team’s starting offense in a real game. Still, there were a couple of plays where I liked his instincts, and he flashed some of his potential if he can eventually start playing more comfortably and faster.

It wasn’t a perfect night from the Steelers, but they managed to keep the good vibes from this summer’s coaching and roster changes mostly intact. There’s room for growth still, certainly, but this was a good first showing. Hopefully, they can show even more progress next Friday when they host the New York Jets.

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