{"id":489327,"date":"2025-10-31T13:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/489327\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T13:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:28:13","slug":"daniel-jeremiah-down-on-2026-nfl-draft-quarterback-class-as-steelers-need-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/489327\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Jeremiah Down On 2026 NFL Draft Quarterback Class As Steelers’ Need Looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Playing host for the 2026 NFL Draft, the Steelers have their eyes on a quarterback\u2014but is anybody worth it<\/a>? Enthusiasm for this upcoming quarterback class has dampened considerably as the 2025 college football season has worn on. Never mind the Arch Manning talk, there just don\u2019t seem to be any great players at the position so far.<\/p>\n

That was the assessment of draft expert Daniel Jeremiah, who discussed the inbound quarterback class for the 2026 NFL Draft, though he didn\u2019t focus on the Steelers or any other team. \u201cThere\u2019s not that buzz of being like, \u2018Man, thank goodness we\u2019ve got the first or second overall pick\u2019\u201d, he said on The Rich Eisen Show<\/a>. \u201cAt this point in time, I would say that there\u2019s some good. I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve necessarily seen some great\u201d.<\/p>\n

Of course, the last time the Steelers were in the market for a quarterback in the first round, they found themselves out of luck. The fact that they had their pick of every quarterback 20th overall didn\u2019t dissuade them from taking Kenny Pickett. Two years later, they traded him, and he\u2019s already on his 18th different team (approximately)<\/a>. So what options might they have?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe two names that you hear more than any other [Fernando] Mendoza<\/a> at Indiana, he\u2019s a good player, and Ty Simpson<\/a> at Alabama\u201d, Jeremiah said in assessing the quarterback class for the 2026 NFL Draft. But he had plenty of qualifiers in assessing their potential.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither one of these guys approach the grade level of the [2024] class with Drake Maye, Jayden Daniels, Caleb Williams\u201d, he said. \u201cI would say even below Cam Ward from last year in terms of the grade that they\u2019ll be carrying. And there\u2019s a bunch of other guys that coming into the year I thought would be no-brainers to come out. LaNorris Sellers was my favorite one. He just hasn\u2019t quite had the year that he\u2019d like to have\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s telling, but obviously not surprising, that Jeremiah only gave a passing mention to Arch Manning. Basically all he said was that he\u2019s obviously not coming out of school next year. And he\u2019s not the only preseason high-value prospect to fall off a cliff. Rolling into November, the Steelers\u2019 quarterback options for the 2026 NFL Draft are not looking pretty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And if that continues to be the case, they will likely try to talk Aaron Rodgers into playing another season. Of course, the Steelers did draft a quarterback just this year, sixth-round pick Will Howard. And he recently just started practicing after spending the season up to this point on the Reserve\/Injured list.<\/p>\n

But surely the Steelers aren\u2019t foolish enough to view Howard as their future franchise quarterback. In reality, he should have zero impact on their plans at quarterback for the 2026 NFL Draft<\/a>. At least, it shouldn\u2019t affect their plans for the early rounds. Maybe it saves them from drafting another backup, but they don\u2019t have their answer on the roster right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playing host for the 2026 NFL Draft, the Steelers have their eyes on a quarterback\u2014but is anybody worth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4955,2856,7,6,15,57,18251,691],"class_list":{"0":"post-489327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-draft","8":"tag-2026-nfl-draft","9":"tag-daniel-jeremiah","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-nfl-draft","13":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","14":"tag-rich-eisen-show","15":"tag-trending"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115469019071295710","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489327","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=489327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}