Click “Listen” above to hear Susan and Jeremy’s lively conversation!
Pittsburgh has been preparing to host the 2026 NFL draft for months: filling storefronts, fixing potholes, cutting down trees and drawing new bus routes to make way for hundreds of thousands of visitors on the North Shore.
But if you’ve never paid attention to the draft until it showed up in your backyard, WESA brings you this briefing on what, exactly, it is.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Susan Scott Peterson: Before we start, I want to acknowledge there’s a trope about public radio listeners not understanding sports. So I would like a little bit of a briefing — kind of reading the summary of the opera before the show — so that I can watch the draft as an interested and educated observer.
Jeremy Scott: Listen to you. “Public radio people aren’t necessarily anti-sports. With that in mind, let’s use an opera metaphor.”
Fair. My first question is a very simple one: What is the NFL draft?
The NFL draft is the player selection process. These players enter into the draft out of college and they hope that they are selected by a team. There are seven rounds of the draft, and there are a total of 257 selections this year. Each team gets one pick in the first round and one pick in the second round.
Then, starting in the third round, they have what they call compensatory picks to go along with the regular pick that the team would normally get. There are all kinds of factors that go into a compensatory pick. Basically, it is a supplemental pick. If a team loses a player to free agency during the course of the year, the NFL uses all kinds of math to determine whether a team gets a compensatory pick in one of the draft’s rounds to go along with the pick that they would normally have during that round.
Is it just like picking teams? There’s a team captain, and you just take turns choosing people? Is that how I can imagine it?
Essentially, yes. And I should mention this, as well: The selection order is determined based on your regular season record from the year before. So, basically, the worst team picks first, and the best team picks last.
I imagine that’s a way to take an opportunity to even out the teams so that games are more competitive during the season.
That is correct. It’s known as “parity.”
Tell me about how the draft has become such a big event. As a younger person, I don’t remember people talking about the NFL draft as a destination, as an event, as the sort of thing it seems to be shaping up to be here in Pittsburgh.
It started back in 1936 in the ballroom of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia.. For many years it was indeed held in various hotel ballrooms throughout the country. This was not an event that was well attended — or even attended at all by the public.
It became more of a public event as the years went on and it grew to what it is right now. But — fun fact — the city of Pittsburgh once hosted an NFL draft before this. This was back in 1947 at the Fort Pitt Hotel. So this is the second time that the city of Pittsburgh has ever hosted a draft, but obviously the ballroom of the Fort Pitt Hotel is nothing compared to all of the North Shore, which is what it’s going to be this year.
What can you tell me about what you are watching for with your own team, the Steelers? What can we get excited for with this draft?
One thing to be excited about is just the volume of picks that the Steelers have. They have 12 picks in this draft. Will they use all of those picks, or will they trade some of those picks and get a veteran player? They could also package picks to move up in the draft. So there’s that to look forward to.
We’re also looking to see: Will the Steelers try and take another stab at a franchise quarterback this year? The speculation is Aaron Rodgers will return, but Aaron Rodgers is 94 years old, more or less. [joking] And he’s not going to lead this team for the next 10 years. If he comes back, we’ll get one more year out of Aaron.
*Editor’s note: Aaron Rodgers is 42 years old.
And even I know that Mike Tomlin stepped down. I can imagine that we’re also watching to see how a new coach is going to shape this team.
*Editor’s note: Peterson could not actually recall the new coach’s name during the interview.
Correct, and head coach Mike McCarthy is known as a quarterback guru. He got the best years out of quarterback Dak Prescott in Dallas. Before that, he worked with Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay. They won a Super Bowl together in 2011 when they beat the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. So McCarthy is known as somebody who is really in tune with quarterbacks.
Mike McCarthy is an offensive mind, which is a switch from Mike Tomlin, who was a defensive guy. So I would imagine a lot of focus on the offensive side of the ball.
Before we wrap up, here’s a fun fact: The Steelers’ first-ever draft pick back in 1936 was a guy by the name of William Shakespeare.
Really?
He was.
You were teasing me about my opera metaphor earlier, but I really feel like that’s something for the public radio listeners.
Just to bring it full circle, a public radio moment: William Shakespeare, the first ever Steelers draft pick. He was out of the University of Notre Dame. But he never actually ended up playing with the Steelers because, back then, the NFL didn’t pay very much. A professional football career was not worth a lot. He had a degree from the University of Notre Dame and decided to become a businessman.