There has been a common thread over the Pittsburgh Steelers’ last two draft classes. The team has always valued “hearts and smarts,” as they call it, but even more than usual, they picked guys in the 2024 NFL Draft who fit the Steelers’ brand. It is a blue-collar town, and the great Steelers teams of the past have all encapsulated that grit in different ways.
Bucky Brooks spoke about this on Move The Sticks as he was breaking down the different draft classes with Daniel Jeremiah and Rhett Lewis.
“There is something about a team that drafts to the brand, and I feel like there were a couple years that the Steelers didn’t necessarily draft to the brand,” Brooks said in a clip of the episode posted on X. “They’re all the way back now. The one thing that shows up in all the players that they took, there’s an innate toughness and physicality that shows up in all of their games. Even Roman Wilson, they play tough, hard-nosed ball.”
Troy Fautanu has an aggressive on-field demeanor where he is constantly looking for extra work and lives to put defenders on their rear end in a pancake. Roman Wilson lived by the mantra “no block, no rock” at Michigan in the wide receiver room, meaning he doesn’t feel like he deserves the ball unless he gives a strong effort blocking in the run game. Then, the trio of state-champion wrestlers in Zach Frazier, Payton Wilson, and Logan Lee. They all have that toughness and that blue-collar mentality that fits Pittsburgh perfectly.
“When those things match up, that’s when the really good stuff happens,” Brooks said of drafting great talents that also fit the brand of the team. “I can just see the Steelers being back on track because they drafted guys that fit the brand.”
There is no hiding what the Steelers want to do this season, especially on offense. Mike Tomlin even came out and said it on the ESPN broadcast after the draft, “we just wanna roll people.”
They started to execute on that mission late in the season last year when the offensive line started to click with rookie Broderick Jones being inserted as a starter at right tackle. Now they have three more offensive linemen in the mix, two of whom should be Week 1 starters and a receiver who knows what it takes to play in a run-first offense like the one he played in at Michigan.
The Steelers are betting big on the run game and the identity of winning in the trenches and imposing their will on opposing defenses. They are zigging when the rest of the league is zagging toward smaller and faster defenses that can keep up with the pass-game trends. With all of their recent investments, it just might work.
