Unpopular Opinion: Steelers fans don’t have to see a player on the field for there to be an evaluation

When the Pittsburgh Steelers are in the dreaded long offseason, there are plenty of ideas to debate. As part of the triumphant trio on the Steelers Preview podcast, I’ve been known to often give a “Dave answer“ to various things as I often like to argue both sides of an issue. With this in mind, a new weekly segment has been born… Unpopular opinion.

There are plenty of arguments both for and against the Pittsburgh Steelers that might not go along with the majority of fans. Oftentimes I believe in these arguments, while other times I simply like to pose a counter argument for ones that are taking it too much to the extreme. For this reason, I’m going to offer some points about the Pittsburgh Steelers that go against the general fan narrative, or at least how I have heard things.

Next up is a reminder that the majority of the evaluation process of a Steelers player is not where the fans can see…

Steelers fans don’t have to see a player on the field for there to be an evaluation

This week’s topic was actually inspired by what I heard on Wednesdays Let’s Ride podcast. Jeff Hartman was talking about Will Howard and expectations for this coming season. Jeff continually said that he would like to see Howard get some action this year in order to have a better idea of what the Steelers had at quarterback before the 2026 draft.

The reason I’m noting this is because I like the way Jeff said this, or at least the way I interpreted it. This was about Jeff wanting to know, not about claiming that the only way the Steelers are going to know anything about Howard is to put him into a game.

With a lot of fans, the last part of that scentence is what many of them believe.

For some reason, there are a number of Steelers fans that think the only way the Steelers could know something about a player is if that fan has seen that player perform in a game. This is so far from the truth. There are many stages of the evaluation process that happen even before a player is put in the position to be on the field during a game. Sometimes the team has to put a player out there because of injuries or other circumstances that they might not be as comfortable with them but the circumstances have called for it. But outside of those situations, a player has to be properly evaluated in the opportunities they have in practice and team meetings in order for the team to be ready to put them on the field.

This is something I think fans forget about way too much. They think their own perspective and their own evaluation is the only thing that’s going on.

I must admit, when a player does get onto the field in a game for everyone to see, what they do in those moments carries a lot more weight than what that player has done in their preparation for the game. There is a lot to be said if a player is someone who rises to the occasion on the field or if there’s someone who falters under the pressure. So it’s not that the evaluation of a player in a game isn’t valuable, it’s that fans just need to remember there’s a lot that has to happen to even get to that point.

I know at the end of the 2024 season there were a lot of people who really wanted to see Roman Wilson. He had only played a handful of snaps in one game and did not have a target in his rookie season. When it got to the end of the year, fans really wanted Wilson to come back onto the 53-man roster, get a helmet for the game, get offensive snaps, and be targeted in order to get a proper evaluation. But this evaluation was only for the sake of the fans. The Steelers had deemed Wilson to not even be up to that point. There was plenty of evaluation of Roman Wilson, and it just wasn’t to the level to get him on the field in a game.

We need to remember this as fans. We only see a small percentage of what a player can do while watching every snap of the game. For every time the Steelers run an offensive play, they’ve run it multiple times in practice. For every defensive situation that a team anticipates, they’ve seen it multiple times in practice. There’s been a lot more going on behind the scenes than what is on the stage that is the NFL football field.

Would it be nice for Steelers fans to get a feel for what Will Howard can do at quarterback this season. Sure, assuming it’s in the proper situation. If Will Howard does not take a single snap is rookie season, just like Mason Rudolph in 2018, does it mean that there was no evaluation done of him all year? Absolutely not. The Steelers will have a good idea of what they have in Will Howard after the 2025 season is concluded. Whether or not he had progressed at that time to do so on the football field in a regular season game remains to be seen.

There is no problem with Steelers fans wanting to see a player on the field to evaluate them for themselves to form their own opinion. But thinking that the Steelers get no evaluation unless fans have seen them a whole other issue.

To hear the latest Unpopular Opinion podcast, check it out in the player below. Be sure to check back for this podcast every Sunday morning during the Steelers offseason.