When the Pittsburgh Steelers selected Navy RB\/WR Eli Heidenreich in the seventh round, his tear-filled celebration was one of the most iconic moments of the 2026 NFL Draft. However, it wasn\u2019t the only lasting moment for the Steelers. The other one didn\u2019t even occur with the Steelers on the board. When the Steelers were preparing to make the 21st overall pick, they called USC WR Makai Lemon. After all, the Dallas Cowboys, owners of the 20th overall pick, weren\u2019t going to select a wide receiver.<\/p>\n
The Cowboys didn\u2019t, of course. What they did do was trade the pick to their divisional rival. And the Philadelphia Eagles, amid speculation that WR A.J. Brown was on his way out of Philly, grabbed Lemon out from under the Steelers\u2019 noses. The moment blew up because the Steelers were on the phone with Lemon, preparing to select him after the Cowboys would have made their pick.<\/p>\n
It sparked a wave of debate. Were the Steelers out of line? Or was this just a simple mistake that happens all the time? Well, former Steelers LB Ryan Shazier experienced a similar moment in 2014. He thought he was going to the Cowboys, but the Steelers drafted him 15th overall \u2014 right before Dallas\u2019 pick.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it happens more than people expect, but the cameras were right in front of Makai when it happened,\u201d Shazier said during an interview with Kyle Odegard of Casino Guru<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s why they saw it. It was a crazy moment for me because my dad texted my uncle, \u2018Hey, Ryan is going to the Cowboys.\u2019 My uncle was a huge Cowboys fan.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019ll tell you this: I was much happier to be drafted by the Steelers than the Cowboys. I was a defensive fan. The Cowboys were America\u2019s Team and that\u2019s cool, but (Pittsburgh) had Coach [Mike] Tomlin, the Rooney family. I already knew about that stuff, and me and my dad liked their defense growing up. It would have been cool either way, but I\u2019m truly thankful where I ended up.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, the Steelers didn\u2019t trade up in the first round to select Ryan Shazier. However, for whatever reason, the Cowboys and owner Jerry Jones thought the Steelers were going in a different direction and called Shazier to make him the pick. The Steelers decided they needed a fast, athletic linebacker in the middle of their defense and grabbed Shazier before he could become a Cowboy.<\/p>\n Knowing Jerry Jones, this moment has stuck with him over the last decade-plus. Steelers insider Gerry Dulac speculated that the Shazier pick played a big part in the Cowboys\u2019 motivation<\/a> to make the trade. After all, the Cowboys didn\u2019t make a trade with a random team outside of their division or their conference.<\/p>\n As Dulac wrote, this \u201cwould be the equivalent of the Steelers making a deal to help the Baltimore Ravens.\u201d No one could imagine that. Yet that\u2019s exactly what Jones did. He took a pair of fourth-round picks from the Eagles to drop two spots.<\/p>\n That part of the equation is probably not very normal during the draft. But, according to Shazier, the Steelers making the call that turned out to be premature isn\u2019t out of the norm. He\u2019s not the only one who thinks that occurs regularly, either. NFL.com\u2019s Bucky Brooks used to be a scout, and he called those early calls<\/a> \u201cstandard procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n It just so happened that the cameras caught the Steelers and the Eagles trying to speak with Makai Lemon at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Pittsburgh Steelers selected Navy RB\/WR Eli Heidenreich in the seventh round, his tear-filled celebration was one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[84239,6537,60022,84240,43554,4538,73,75,74,1833,84241],"class_list":["post-189055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-casino-guru","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-jerry-jones","tag-kyle-odegard","tag-makai-lemon","tag-philadelphia-eagles","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-ryan-shazier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189055","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=189055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}