The Pittsburgh Steelers are reportedly moving on without running back Kaleb Johnson only a year after using a third-round draft pick on him.<\/p>\n
The team is finalizing a deal to trade the second-year pro to the Packers, according to Tom Pelissero of Netflix Sports.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old was inactive for the final three games of last season and sat out four others in a disappointing rookie year. The arrival of coach Mike McCarthy was seemingly a clean slate for the former Iowa star, yet Johnson\u2019s stock seemed to slide throughout the summer.<\/p>\n
He was used sparingly in the first and third preseason games, playing eight snaps against the Packers and 10 against the Bills. He saw a larger workload against the Jets, playing 24 snaps, but never gained much traction while competing for the third running back job.<\/p>\n
In all, Johnson rushed for 53 yards on 17 carries. His longest run was 6 yards.<\/p>\n
The Packers have a need at running back with starter Josh Jacobs facing two misdemeanor charges, according to the Associated <\/a>Press<\/a>. ESPN reported Sunday that the NFL put Jacobs on the commissioner\u2019s exempt list, making him unavailable to practice or play.<\/p>\n As a rookie, Johnson rushed for 69 yards on 28 carries. He also caught one pass for 9 yards. However, his most memorable play was a costly special teams gaffe that led to a touchdown for the Seahawks.<\/p>\n At Iowa, Johnson earned second-team All-American honors and was named the Big Ten Running Back of the Year in 2024. The 6-foot-1, 224-pounder rushed for 1,537 yards that season and scored a school-record 23 touchdowns.<\/p>\n The Steelers drafted him with the 83rd overall pick in 2025. He was the sixth running back drafted last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Steelers are reportedly moving on without running back Kaleb Johnson only a year after using a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-275372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275372","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=275372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}