The 2026 Pittsburgh Steelers draft won’t be remembered for who the franchise picked or who they left on the board.

It’ll be remembered for who they missed.

Or, maybe it won’t be.

Perhaps Pittsburgh’s first-round pick, Max Iheanachor, becomes the next Jonathan Ogden, second-round receiver Germie Bernard turns into an All-Pro and Makai Lemon ends up in Philadelphia as… well… a lemon.

However, we are not here to reevaluate that already tapped-out conversation. We are here for the wildly unpopular, always hated, never requested, usually rejected “Breakfast With Benz: What the Steelers didn’t get in the draft” column.

That’s right. It’s back.

Over the coming weeks, Steelers Nation will gush over why this draft class is going to be the difference between a season with a playoff win and all the postseason failures over the last decade. Meanwhile, I’m here to rain on your parade like the cloud over the little bouncing ball in the Zoloft commercial.

I’m here to remind you of all the holes, shortcomings and soft spots that still exist on the team despite three days’ worth of new additions via the draft and an offseason of free-agent activity.

Read. React. Rage. Respond. My email is at the bottom of the column. You can tell me why all 10 of the Steelers picks will become Hall of Famers.

I’ll just tell you what the Steelers didn’t get in the draft:

• A high-end wide receiver: In a draft stocked with wide receivers, and with a desperate need for numbers at the position, the Steelers could’ve done more here.

General manager Omar Khan took a swing at getting Lemon at No. 21. He missed in dubious fashion. Then he was either unable or unwilling to move up to get the likes of KC Concepcion (Texas A&M), Omar Cooper Jr. (Indiana) or Denzel Boston (Washington). Concepcion and Boston wound up in the AFC North with Cleveland. Cooper went at pick No. 30 to the New York Jets.

Bernard was the eight-rated receiver at ESPN.com and the eighth one drafted. The Alabama product is promising and may have gone higher in a lesser draft pool at the position, but he was a notch below at least six of the seven receivers that went in the top 40.

Bernard might become a quality No. 3 receiver this year and may be a potential replacement for Michael Pittman Jr. in the future. But it doesn’t exactly feel like the Steelers got their next primary target. Lemon might have been that before the end of his first contract.

From there, the Steelers drafted a quarterback, a cornerback and a guard before going back to the wide receiver waters, even though they only have four remaining players at the position on the roster from last year.

They came away with Kaden Wetjen in the fourth round. He is an excellent return specialist from Iowa, but a guy who had only 23 catches and 197 receiving yards in his career with the Hawkeyes. He got to Iowa City after playing JUCO football as a running back.

“(The Steelers) were my only formal interview at the Combine,” Wetjen said. “I actually had some scouts that were (saying), ‘We didn’t even know you played receiver. We thought you were just a kick returner.’ That was the whole point of the (Shrine Bowl). Hopefully, it turned some heads.”

Wetjen was the 252nd-ranked player in the draft at ESPN.com. The Steelers took him at 121. He was surprised enough to be drafted that early, that he was playing golf, and his parents were at his brother’s track meet.

“I didn’t shank it into the pond after I got picked, so everything’s going good,” Wetjen said while walking down the ninth fairway.

Fourth-round pick. First-round sense of humor. So that’s good.

The point is, you can still expect Aaron Rodgers to be throwing the ball to Roman Wilson and Ben Skowronek on a few occasions this year.

“We traded up to get Germie. So I think it kind of speaks for how we feel. We think he’s gonna add to the room,” Khan said. “(Wetjen) is gonna help us in the return game, which was an area of need for us.”

Drafting Mt. Lebanon alum Eli Heidenreich in the seventh round is a great story. He caught 109 passes (16 touchdowns) for 1,994 yards as a running back at Navy over three seasons. He may end up playing more receiver than running back. Let’s see if he can help.

Featured Local Businesses

More local businesses

• Clarity along the offensive line: The Steelers significantly improved the depth and talent along the offensive line. That’s great. I think Iheanachor (Arizona State) will become a really good player someday, and third-round guard Gennings Dunker (Iowa) is good value. I really like both of those players.

Now… what do they do with them?

Dunker is a clean read. He either wins the left guard job over Spencer Anderson and Brock Hoffman, or he doesn’t and goes into an apprenticeship at the position until he is capable of starting.

The Iheanachor issue is different. Head coach Mike McCarthy seemed reluctant to consider him as a potential fit at left guard, but didn’t shoot down the option of moving Troy Fautanu to guard or left tackle. That would open up Iheanachor’s natural position of right tackle, but it’d be disrupting Fautanu. He carved out a nice home at that spot last year while Dylan Cook held down the fort on the left side after Broderick Jones’ injury.

“We had two really good days on Monday and Tuesday, working with our men. Frankly, we looked at as much position-flex throughout the individual drills (as) we did work with the offensive line,” McCarthy said. “We even had some — not team drills, but group activity — that worked a number of the offensive linemen, both left and right. It’s part of being a new staff.”

My hope is that they keep it simple. Leave Fautanu where he is. Let those three guards battle it out for that spot on the left of Zach Frazier. Then let Cook’s performance, Jones’ health and Iheanachor’s development dictate who becomes the left tackle.

In case of emergency, they can try Dunker at tackle. He started 37 games at right tackle at Iowa.

• A clear challenger at inside linebacker: The Steelers have a lot of money invested in Patrick Queen. They have a lot of equity invested in Payton Wilson.

Both are in their third years in Pittsburgh. Both have been capable and occasionally good. Neither have been good enough, often enough and rarely great.

There were some interesting first- and second-round players at the position in the draft, then some early third-day guys of note, including Pitt’s Kyle Louis (who went to Miami in the fourth round). However, none of them fell into the Steelers’ sphere when they were on the clock.

Queen and Wilson need to create more splash and be stiffer against the run, and the club needs more quality reps from Malik Harrison and Cole Holcomb behind them if they are on the team by the end of August.

• Tight end depth: The Steelers drafted Indiana tight end Riley Nowakowski, but he is being listed as a fullback. He’ll be absorbing that part of Connor Heyward’s duties.

“My agent’s really close with (Heyward),” Nowakowski said. “So he definitely talked about his role, and I watched him a lot last year, just being kind of an H-back, similar to what I do a little bit. Hopefully, I can expand and do as much as I can for the offense.”

McCarthy uses a lot more three-wide receiver looks than three tight ends (as former offensive coordinator Arthur Smith preferred). But right now, the Steelers only have two of note — Pat Freiermuth and Darnell Washington.

J.J. Galbreath is the only other rostered tight end. Jonnu Smith is gone, and Heyward is a Las Vegas Raider. If Freiermuth or Washington gets injured, the Steelers have a problem.

• The quarterback of the future: Oh, yeah. That.

No one was expecting that to happen this year. This is just a reminder that the Steelers are still searching for that person, four years after they missed by drafting Kenny Pickett in the first round.

I don’t see third-rounder Drew Allar (Penn State) fitting that description. Will Howard either.

McCarthy has a different view of the conversation.

“It’s about the quarterback room. I’ve always approached it that way. I learned it that way as a young coach,” McCarthy said. “It’s about training the whole room together. This is about developing the room and trying to make the room as deep as we possibly can.”

Fair enough, but that room always looked deeper when Brett Favre or Dak Prescott was sitting at the front of it — or when Rodgers was there in his 20s and 30s.

Featured Local Businesses

More local businesses

Not so much at 42.