Football in shorts, as Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin would be the first to remind, is not football. But it’s the closest thing that you get to NFL football during the months of May and June, so you make do with what is on hand.
That’s all players like wide receiver Hakeem Butler can do. Fresh off of an XFL season in which he was one of the league’s best receivers, the former fourth-round draft pick is hoping to resurrect his NFL dreams after signing with the Steelers.
It didn’t hurt, as Chris Adamski recounted in a recent article for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, that he apparently made a pretty snazzy catch or two during OTAs last week, but he’s going to need plenty more of those over the course of the summer if he wants to earn a spot on the 53-man roster—which he already knows more than most.
“I will have to show them more than one catch”, he told Adamski when he was asked about the play referenced in the article, featuring a toe tap to complete the catch inbounds. “This is a chance”, he added of signing with the Steelers, “and I am just trying to take advantage of it every day”.
Once regarded as a potential day-two draft pick, Butler was ultimately drafted in the fourth round out of Iowa State in 2019, but he spent his rookie year on the Reserve/Injured List. At 6’5”, 227 pounds, he actually converted to tight end in 2020 when he signed with the Philadelphia Eagles’ practice squad, just to keep his NFL dreams alive.
But to now he has played in all of two games with one offensive snap, a target that he did not catch. Butler was out of the NFL entirely in 2022—indeed, he’s been off the league’s radar since being cut in late August of 2021. He even struggled to stick with a Canadian Football League team in the interim.
But he managed to find his footing with the St. Louis BattleHawks in the XFL, catching 51 passes for 599 yards and eight touchdowns, all among the highest totals in the league, if not right at the top, in each respective category.
Yet as he stressed himself, all that did was give him an opportunity. His foot is in the door. But the Steelers already have Diontae Johnson, George Pickens, Allen Robinson II, Calvin Austin III, Miles Boykin, Anthony Miller, Gunner Olszewski, and others at wide receiver. And they may keep as few as five, so he’ll really have to stand out.
Physically, that comes naturally. Wide receivers of his body type don’t necessarily come along every day. But now at 27 years old, he’s still trying to prove that he belongs at this level. If not, he’ll have to hope he can stay at the top in the minor leagues.
