Will Howard walked into Steelers training camp with a clear message waiting for him. On the first day, head coach Mike McCarthy made it known that Mason Rudolph would take reps with the second team while Howard and rookie Drew Allar worked with the third team. That setup sent a loud signal after Howard’s OTA and minicamp work, and it put the pressure squarely on him to respond.
He did exactly that.
By the end of the opening week at Saint Vincent College, Howard had become the most noticeable quarterback on the field for Pittsburgh. He was consistently threading throws into tight windows and, more than anyone else in the group, looking to attack downfield.
On the second day of practice, he was fitting seam passes between defenders to Robert Tonyan and Kaden Wetjen, showing a willingness to push the ball that separated him from the pack. At times, only Aaron Rodgers matched that kind of aggressiveness.
The impression Howard left was bigger than one or two flashy throws. He looked like a quarterback who was beginning to make the coaching on him pay off.
The work is starting to show up in practice, and the early returns suggest he’s moving in the right direction. That matters because there is still plenty of camp left, along with three preseason games that will have a major say in how the Steelers sort out their quarterbacks.
Howard still has ground to cover if he wants to get past Rudolph, and he’ll need to keep stacking days to do it. But after a week in which he finally put himself on the map, he’s given himself a real shot to keep the competition alive.
That’s why he stands out as the Steelers’ biggest winner from the first week of camp. He didn’t just show improvement; he changed the conversation.
Before this week, that hadn’t happened at all during OTAs or minicamp. Rudolph and Allar couldn’t say the same after the first stretch of practices, and Howard now has momentum he didn’t have when camp opened.
The bigger picture for Howard is straightforward. If he wants to keep his path toward a starting job alive, he needs to become the backup this season and keep his trajectory pointed toward 2027 and beyond. Getting there won’t be simple, but the opening week gave him something real to build on.
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Oliphants background makes him worth watching beyond the usual transfer buzz. He came out of high school as a highly regarded defensive back, and football runs in the family, which often shows up in how quickly a player adjusts to a new system. For Kansas State, the appeal is straightforward: a versatile defender who can help the unit in multiple phases, even as the larger question is how much of a role he can win once the season starts to take shape. [Read more 🡒]