The Pittsburgh Steelers added Notre Dame defensive tackle Gabriel Rubio in the sixth round of the 2026 NFL Draft. Here are our staff grades on the selection.<\/p>\n
Ryan Parish: Going to be honest, I don\u2019t have a lot on Rubio. His year was done after Week 7 when he was shut down with a left arm injury. On the NFL\u2019s website, he\u2019s the only player in the 6th round that doesn\u2019t have an accompanying photo. At 6\u20195 and 321 pounds, I assume he\u2019s going to try to get snaps at nose tackle. Valuewise this feels like a reach, and Jordan van Deberg, who went a pick later, is a DT I would have rather targeted. That there is so little information out there on him feels like a bad sign. But I\u2019ll reserve judgment until we see him this summer. Grade: C<\/p>\n
Ryland Bickley: I haven\u2019t watched any of Rubio until today so I\u2019m not going to be the most opinionated on this one. What\u2019s worrying is that he was incredibly low on the consensus board and his 4.82 RAS doesn\u2019t show a ton of upside. But his size (6\u20195, 322 pounds) and over-33-inch arms fit the bill for an NFL defensive lineman. In the little bit of Rubio that I\u2019ve watched now, he appears to be a solid run stuffer. Giving incomplete grades is no fun — and there\u2019s rarely a reason to be mad at a sixth-round selection — we\u2019ll see how this pick plays out. Grade: C+<\/p>\n
Mike Nicastro: Consensus appears that Rubio was quite low on top pundits draft boards, and I\u2019ll defer to that here. Certainly the Steelers believe they wouldn\u2019t have been able to get this guy as an undrafted free agent, but they may be the only ones. Grade: D<\/p>\n
Jarrett Bailey: Respectfully, I haven\u2019t a blues clue who this guy is. His dad, Angel, was drafted by the Steelers in 1998 and was then traded to the 49ers. He is the No. 635 player on the consensus big board. Grade: D-<\/p>\n
Let us know what you think in the comments. Be sure to bookmark Behind the Steel Curtain for all the latest news, breakdowns, and more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Steelers added Notre Dame defensive tackle Gabriel Rubio in the sixth round of the 2026 NFL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74,35221,12641],"class_list":["post-176279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-steelers-analysis","tag-pittsburgh-steelers-draft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}