The NFL preseason started this week, and on Thursday the Pittsburgh Steelers opened that first live football window with a game against the Green Bay Packers. It was the kind of night that ends months of offseason talk and starts the real sorting, even if only a little.
For the Steelers, the first takeaway was that nothing went badly enough to damage the week. The team avoided any significant injuries, and Mason Rudolph, Will Howard and Drew Allar all played exceptionally well. Drew Allar threw some darts, a welcome sight for a roster that has spent the long offseason feeding on quarterback debate and little else.
That is why the search interest around Nfl Plus and preseason football spikes now. After months of repetitive Steelers quarterback discussion, this is the first tangible action fans can judge with their own eyes. Thursday gave them a game, not a projection, and that alone changes the conversation.
The better news for Pittsburgh came with a warning label. Strong preseason showings are real in the sense that they happened, but they are not always predictive once the games count for more. That is part of what makes this stretch useful and tricky at the same time. The performances can look crisp. The conclusions should stay small.
Kaleb Johnson was the player whose usage stood out most. He went into Thursday buried on the depth chart, and the Steelers’ new coaching staff did not seem overly impressed with him. Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle did not dress, Travis Homer and Lew Nichols handled the first-half snaps, and Johnson did not enter until the second half. Even then, he logged just one offensive series and was rushing punts in the final minute.
That usage matters because it says more than a box score line can. In a preseason game, work distribution is often the clearest hint of where a player stands, and Johnson’s limited role suggests he is not being treated as a safe piece yet. He is a second-year player, but second-year status does not protect anyone if the staff keeps assigning his work to others.
The old Mike Tomlin era is described as over in this framing, and that makes every early personnel choice feel sharper. Mike McCarthy now has the burden of sorting through a roster before the preseason gets any deeper, and Thursday offered the first rough outline of how he sees the room. The quarterback play looked good, but the more important test may be how quickly a player like Johnson can turn a few late snaps into something more secure.
For now, the signal is simple. Pittsburgh has its first live football of the season, the quarterback discussion has another chapter, and Johnson’s place is still the part most likely to change next.
