Former Pittsburgh Steelers Pro Bowl offensive tackle Alejandro Villanueva had an unusual path to the NFL. He went undrafted in 2010, tried out with the Cincinnati Bengals as a tight end, but returned to military service after failing to make the team. After his first contract in the military, he once again received a tryout opportunity with the Chicago Bears as a tight end but failed to make the team and returned for his final tour with the Army Rangers.
After his military career was over, he paid his way into a 2014 regional scouting combine and received an invite to the NFL’s super regional combine where he earned his first NFL contract with the Philadelphia Eagles as a defensive end. It was in the team’s third preseason game that season against the Steelers that he caught the eye of people within the organization.
“When I played against the Steelers, they saw me and they were intrigued by it,” Villanueva said on The Team House podcast posted on YouTube. “And I think Pittsburgh has a history of selecting players that have military backgrounds or that serve. The veteran population in Pittsburgh is a huge component…The Steelers are very aware of who their fan base is.”
He actually credits his time in the military to getting him his NFL opportunities, citing the heavy focus that the league placed on honoring the military during that period of time. It was just a few years prior in 2011 that the NFL launched Salute to Service where the league honors the military during the month of November.
Villanueva signed with the Steelers at the end of August in 2014, a week after the Eagles cut him, and spent that season on their practice squad. He earned the starting left tackle job in the middle of the 2015 season and went on to start every single game for the rest of his NFL career. That is 90 straight starts with the Steelers and then 16 with the Baltimore Ravens in the final season of his career. Some of that drive to fight through the many minor injuries that NFL players deal with to start every game derives from his status as an undrafted player.
“When you come into the NFL, you have different status,” Villanueva said. “If you’re a first-round pick, you’re the golden child. The organization did a lot of research to select you, so the organization’s name is at stake with your performance. So you’re gonna get a thousand chances, you are for sure going to play. But when you’re undrafted you’re trying out for the team every year…you are on the go the whole time. You cannot go down. I mean, that’s the reason why I never even missed a game because I couldn’t go down. If I went down, somebody else would go back behind me and take my job.”
That paradigm is likely to continue playing out for the Steelers in the 2024 season. Just look at the quarterback position where QB Kenny Pickett seems very likely to get another chance to start the season. His play was generally below the line in 2023, to the point where he finished the season on the bench, but head coach Mike Tomlin and team president Art Rooney II have more or less stated that Pickett will get the first look once again. Things might look different if he were not the team’s 2022 first-round pick.
Villanueva was painfully aware of this dynamic in the NFL and it drove him to be the ironman that he proved to be for those seven years he spent in the NFL.
