nine the Steelers carried on their initial 2025 53-man roster.<\/a> For what it\u2019s worth, the Steelers initially kept four quarterbacks last season before placing Will Howard on IR, and that was with nine linemen.\u00a0If the Steelers do keep four quarterbacks, the easy solution is to keep only eight offensive linemen.<\/p>\nThat roster spot doesn\u2019t have to be for a quarterback, either. It could be for someone like Eli Heidenreich, whose current path to the 53-man roster looks murky. It could be used to keep a special teamer like Travis Homer. On a crowded roster, the Steelers could find a way to benefit from keeping fewer offensive linemen.<\/p>\n
Of course, the question then becomes who the odd man out would be. Troy Fautanu, Mason McCormick, Zach Frazier, Max Iheanachor and Gennings Dunker are all locked in. Dylan Cook should be too. Spencer Anderson and Brock Hoffman could fill the other two spots with Broderick Jones beginning the season on PUP or potentially IR. That group of eight makes a lot of sense, though it would leave the Steelers with just one backup tackle between Cook and Iheanachor.<\/p>\n
Given McCarthy\u2019s history of keeping only eight offensive linemen, it\u2019s something that has to be taken into consideration in light of the current state of Pittsburgh\u2019s roster. Keeping four quarterbacks, even with eight offensive linemen, might not be the direction they go, but having an extra roster spot could help the Steelers carry a player like Homer or Heidenreich, who could be a potential contributor next season.<\/p>\n
Jones\u2019 health and how quickly he gets back up to speed will be a factor in how many linemen the Steelers keep, but if he\u2019s not fully healthy by Week 1, PUP or IR makes a lot of sense. If the team rolls with the eight offensive linemen outlined above, it will leave Ryan McCollum and Jack Driscoll on the outside looking in, but both are prime candidates to potentially land on the practice squad.<\/p>\n
A team needs eight offensive linemen active to keep the maximum roster size at 48; any fewer drops that number to 47. If the Steelers do only keep eight, all eight would likely be active on gameday, but it would increase flexibility elsewhere and seems like a real possibility this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the hot topics in recent days has been what the Pittsburgh Steelers will do behind Aaron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[8203,42256,73,75,74,1833],"class_list":["post-198522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-mike-mccarthy","tag-offensive-line","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-steelers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198522","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=198522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}