{"id":375530,"date":"2025-09-17T17:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T17:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/375530\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T17:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T17:00:11","slug":"will-howard-explains-why-combine-interview-with-steelers-was-breath-of-fresh-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/375530\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Howard Explains Why Combine Interview With Steelers Was ‘Breath Of Fresh Air’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NFL Combine can be stressful for prospects. They\u2019re shuffled through team interviews, media interviews, and on-field workouts with little downtime in between. For some, their performance on the field can be the difference between them getting drafted or not, or the difference between being a first-round pick or falling. Prospects are constantly under a microscope, but for Will Howard, he didn\u2019t feel that way when he met with the Pittsburgh Steelers.<\/p>\n

The Steelers held a formal meeting with Howard, and he told Cam Heyward on Heyward\u2019s Not Just Football podcast<\/a> that the meeting was different (in a good way) from his other interviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cMike [Tomlin] and I just sat there, and I was in a chair, they put me in a nice, comfy chair in the middle of a room. And everyone was just looking at me, talking to me. It was really just Mike T and I talking, he just wanted to get to know me and who I was, what I was about. At that moment, I was like, \u2018Wow, this guy\u2019s different. He\u2019s not like a lot of other coaches,’\u201d Howard said.<\/p>\n

He thought that Tomlin, like other coaches, would want him to get up on the board and see if he was a \u201cgood processor\u201d or try to remember plays. The fact that it wasn\u2019t the case really resonated with Howard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that was probably my favorite interview that I had throughout the whole process. Because it\u2019s such a strenuous, stressful process,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd for Mike T to come in there and just be cool and down to earth, it was a little breath of fresh air.\u201d<\/p>\n

After getting drafted by the Steelers, Howard said Pittsburgh was the place he wanted to be<\/a>. Instead of putting Howard through the ringer with board work and film study and making it more of a formal interview with a clear power dynamic, the Steelers and Mike Tomlin focused on getting to know Howard as a person.<\/p>\n

The Steelers do a ton of scouting legwork to make sure a prospect has the traits and skills they\u2019re looking for. What\u2019s hard to learn through watching tape and going to games is how a prospect is as a person. Information can be gleaned from talking to coaches and people around a program, but it\u2019s not until the team can get a player in a room and have a conversation with him that it can feel comfortable with his character.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a big part of Combine interviews, and the Steelers and Tomlin\u2019s efforts to get to know Howard beyond who he is a player was refreshing for him. Clearly, the Steelers liked what they heard from him too, and Howard has been nothing but a consummate professional since the team took him in the sixth round of the draft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL Combine can be stressful for prospects. They\u2019re shuffled through team interviews, media interviews, and on-field workouts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4034,7,1255,6,15,33852,2183],"class_list":{"0":"post-375530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-draft","8":"tag-cameron-heyward","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-mike-tomlin","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-nfl-draft","13":"tag-not-just-football","14":"tag-will-howard"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115220710907474413","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}