Player: RB/WR Eli Heidenreich
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: Rookie Eli Heidenreich passed the first important test as a rookie, the eye test during rookie minicamp. A Navy product, he came to the Steelers via the seventh round of the 2026 NFL Draft. While he has intriguing skills, his college career is somewhat difficult to project to the professional level. But all he has to do is show that he belongs, and then he’ll earn a role.
A seventh-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, Eli Heidenreich is already a fan favorite. It didn’t hurt that he was blessed with an iconic draft moment that weekend, selected by his hometown team while on the stage for the event. But now that he’s here, he knows the mission is to prove he isn’t just a feel-good story.
So far, he is already doing that. Steelers HC Mike McCarthy spoke highly of him after breaking rookie minicamp on Saturday, saying he looked “very comfortable”. Given his offensive background at Navy, it’s not a foregone conclusion that he would have looked comfortable from the outset.
“He’s picked it up”, McCarthy said of Heidenreich adapting to the Steelers’ offense, calling him bright. The rookie pointed out that while Navy doesn’t run a conventional offense, he knows how to learn new schemes. During his time there, they installed three different schemes, so the process is not unfamiliar to him.
“Obviously, he has an excellent skill set, and you can see the quickness that just jumps off the field at you”, McCarthy added of Eli Heidenreich, whom the Steelers list as both a running back and a wide receiver. Heidenreich seems to view himself primarily as a receiving running back.
Of course, the question becomes where and how he fits on the roster. At least on paper, you can already make the case for a full running back and wide receiver room. Eli Heidenreich falls somewhere in between, so how does that work out in terms of room numbers? As he was Pittsburgh’s last selection, they didn’t bring out a position coach to discuss him. We don’t even know which position coach or coaches he’s currently working with. Is he in the running back room, the wide receiver room, or perhaps both? As long as he’s picking up what they’re trying to teach him and applying it to the field, it doesn’t matter, I suppose.
With the 2025 season behind us and the new league year underway, we still have stock to take. Already promisinga year of change, they are shaking things up. That is unavoidable, of course, when you gut the coaching staff. Mike Tomlin’s resignation will fundamentally change this football team, including the playoffs on the roster.
After a long season, we have finally seen that this Steelers team is playoff-bound. But they also showed that their progress was actually minimal,since they made it no further. Two years in a row, with two different quarterbacks, they went 10-7 and lost in the Wild Card Round. The only differences are that they ended the season on a higher note and won the division. But it didn’t help.
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