Offensive lineman Derwin Gray played for three NFL teams and two CFL franchises. The Pittsburgh Steelers rose above all the others. Reflecting on his professional career, Gray touted his time with Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
\u201cPittsburgh was the best team I ever played for. And it still is today,\u201d Gray said in a recent interview on The Katie Black Show.<\/a> \u201cPittsburgh is the best organization. It had a lot of veteran people there. When I say veteran, not just veterans on the field, but veterans off the field. They took care of their bodies. The way they treated their wives.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way they actually would [be] just loyal to not just themselves or the game, but loyal to their family. Where you have a lot of distractions thrown at you, and they always kept the main thing. The main thing is football and family.\u201d<\/p>\n A seventh-round pick in 2019 out of Maryland, Gray played tackle in college but primarily worked at guard with Pittsburgh. He appeared in five games in 2020, seeing a large chunk of action in a Week 16 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. For young players like him, having veterans to show him the way to prepare not just as a player but as a person on his own, and to navigate his career, is invaluable. He cited QB Ben Roethlisberger and C Maurkice Pouncey as key influencers.<\/p>\n Star player, he wasn\u2019t, but Gray says the organization treated everyone on the roster with respect.<\/p>\n \u201cMike Tomlin opened his door for some of his players to come in, spend Christmas or Thanksgiving with the head coach. Which in the NFL is rare, unless you\u2019re just a star player of the team\u2026[If] you\u2019re the last guy on the totem pole of the team, you ain\u2019t really getting that extended invite like that.\u201d<\/p>\n A Washington D.C. native, Derwin Gray could make a quick drive back home to see friends and family. Others didn\u2019t have that close outlet, and many took Tomlin up on his offer. During 2024\u2019s in-season Hard Knocks, cameras captured Tomlin addressing the team and extending an invitation to any player who wanted to come over.<\/p>\n It\u2019s those cultural elements that Mike McCarthy will be tasked with replicating. Not that McCarthy must follow Tomlin\u2019s approach to the letter, each coach has his own style, but building out the culture is just as important as building out the roster. McCarthy\u2019s tenure with the Green Bay Packers, a team with a similar history and philosophy to Pittsburgh, along with his local roots, were reasons why he was tabbed as Tomlin\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n Waived late in 2020, Gray spent time with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans but never appeared in another NFL game. He latched on with the UFL Birmingham Stallions and started in the 2023 and 2024 seasons.<\/p>\n Most recently, he spent time with the CFL\u2019s BC Lions. For reasons unknown, he, along with three other American players, was placed on the Lions\u2019 suspended list<\/a> last May. His playing days seem to be drawing to an end, but being a seventh-round pick and having played about five years professionally is no small feat.<\/p>\n