{"id":177036,"date":"2026-04-27T05:21:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T05:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/177036\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T05:21:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T05:21:17","slug":"for-third-time-in-four-years-pittsburgh-selects-son-of-a-former-steelers-draft-pick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/177036\/","title":{"rendered":"For Third Time In Four Years, Pittsburgh Selects Son Of A Former Steelers Draft Pick"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Steelers love bloodlines, and increasingly it seems as though they love their own, drafting the offspring of yet another draft pick. For the third time in four years, Pittsburgh took the son of a player it previously drafted. In this case, it\u2019s sixth-round DL Gabriel Rubio<\/a>, whose father is offering plenty of advice.<\/p>\n

The Steelers used a seventh-round pick on Angel Rubio in 1998. A nose tackle, he never actually played for Pittsburgh, traded to the 49ers by September. He ultimately played two games for the Falcons in 1999. He later played in the XFL and AFL. Very much still around, he just watched his son go to the Steelers in the draft.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was ecstatic\u201d, Gabriel Rubio said of his father\u2019s reaction to his draft selection and going to the Steelers, via transcript provided by the team\u2019s media department. \u201cHe\u2019s giving me all the pointers right now about living in Pittsburgh and what\u2019s going on, what\u2019s going to happen. I\u2019m really counting on his guidance\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Steelers drafting players with football bloodlines is far from uncommon. It turns out, that wasn\u2019t just a Mike Tomlin thing; after all, there are certain obvious advantages. We see that with some of their recent selections.<\/p>\n

In 2023, the Steelers drafted Joey Porter Jr., son of Joey Porter Sr, in the second round. In 2025, they drafted Carson Bruener, son of Mark Bruener. Both not only played extensively for the Steelers after being drafted by them, they also either presently or formerly served as a coach or scout.<\/p>\n

Of course, it doesn\u2019t have to be a father-son dynamic. The Steelers took Connor Heyward in 2022, younger brother of 2011 first-round pick Cam Heyward<\/a>. In 2017, they drafted T.J. Watt, younger brother of J.J. Watt. The elder Watt never played for the Steelers, but the bigger point was the bloodlines<\/a>, not the organizational link. There are many other examples, including the Edmunds brothers, two of whom played for the Steelers, sons of Ferrell Edmunds. As for sixth-round draft pick Gabriel Rubio does, he wasn\u2019t on our radar, but he was on the Steelers\u2019. It helps that DB coach Jason Simmons was a part of the same Steelers draft class as Rubio\u2019s father in 1998<\/a>. That class, by the way, also included Alan Faneca and Hines Ward, and best of all, Chris Fuamatu-Ma\u2019afala.<\/p>\n

As he makes his way through his first season with the Steelers as a late-round draft pick, Rubio intends to lean heavily on his father\u2019s guidance. \u201cHaving a person who\u2019s been through it and who has done all the hard things\u201d, he said \u201cis something very special, and I can\u2019t explain it unless you have it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Of course, Rubio already has multiple teammates who can relate exactly to his situation. Carson Bruener in particular, whose father, Mark, remains a central figure in the scouting department and very well could have played a role in the Steelers drafting Rubio<\/a>. Joey Porter Sr., of course, is very much still around, and announced the Steelers\u2019 selection of QB Drew Allar, Joey Porter Jr.\u2019s former teammate at Penn State.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Steelers love bloodlines, and increasingly it seems as though they love their own, drafting the offspring of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[31803,79145,78811,73,75,74,1833,995],"class_list":{"0":"post-177036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-2026-nfl-draft","9":"tag-angel-rubio","10":"tag-gabriel-rubio","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","13":"tag-pittsburgh-news","14":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","15":"tag-trending"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177036","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=177036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}