With Aaron Rodgers seemingly not anywhere close to making a decision on his future, all eyes will be on the Pittsburgh Steelers and how they address the quarterback position during the 2025 NFL Draft. The team had Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders in for a pre-draft visit last week, and there’s been smoke about him falling to Pittsburgh at No. 21 overall. But former Steelers OT and current analyst Max Starks doesn’t see Pittsburgh moving up to take Sanders, mostly due to the team’s limited draft capital.
“I don’t think they reach for Shedeur. They don’t have the resources first of all. They don’t have a second-round pick. And I think when you’re jumping up and I think especially in this year’s draft, everyone wants a coveted second day pick early on. And the Steelers just don’t have that resource,” Starks said on the Bart & Carlin Show on ESPN Radio.
Starks believes the Steelers will target a defensive lineman in the first round.
“You need that elite talent in the middle, especially in today’s NFL and what Philadelphia showed us,” Starks added. “That if you got guys that can pass rush up the middle, it doesn’t matter what you got off the edge. Make sure your corners can hold up.”
Defensive line has long been thought to be Pittsburgh’s first round selection, and Starks listed Ole Miss’ Walter Nolen, Michigan’s Kenneth Grant and Toledo’s Darius Alexander as potential options for the Steelers. Alexander might be a reach in the first round, but Nolen and Grant are both expected to be selected next Thursday night.
It seems as if Starks believes that Sanders will be off the board by Pittsburgh’s first-round pick, and it’s true that trading up would be difficult for the Steelers without a second-round pick. The team would likely need to include 2026 draft capital to facilitate moving up, and that may not be something that they want to do.
The Steelers can opt to wait and take a quarterback with their third-round pick and address the defensive line in the first round. That would make a lot of sense given their issues defending the run, particularly in their Wild Card Round loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
That wasn’t an isolated game, though. Pittsburgh had issues a few times stopping teams on the ground even though the overall body of work was fine. Even so, the Steelers lost Larry Ogunjobi and they need to find a successor to Cameron Heyward, so grabbing a first-round defensive tackle would make a lot of sense.
