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.
In Other News...
Jimmy Rogers Is Setting A Very Different Tone At Iowa State
Iowa State opened fall camp under new head coach Jimmy Rogers with a different kind of energy, one rooted less in outside noise and more in the work happening inside the building. Rogers said he liked what he saw in the first practice and pointed to the groups early cohesion as a positive sign, especially when measured against what he has seen in previous stops. For a program heading into a new season with plenty of questions from the outside, the emphasis was clear: development first, competition always.
Rogers is trying to build confidence as much as he is trying to build a depth chart, and that tone was evident from the start of camp. He has kept the focus on player growth and on making every spot earnable, a message meant to push the roster while also keeping the team grounded in its own standards. With the opener approaching and expectations outside the program still modest, Iowa State is spending August trying to become the kind of team that can outplay the forecast. [Read more 🡒]
Iowa State Enters New Big 12 Era Without One Revenue Boost
Iowa State football will head into the 2023 season with a look that is mostly unchanged from a branding standpoint, even as the Big 12 moves further into an era where corporate sponsorships are becoming part of the uniform. Athletic director Jamie Pollard said the Cyclones will not have a school-specific logo on their jerseys, leaving the Nike swoosh and Big 12 mark as the main visual identifiers, along with the Monster Energy logo that comes from the conference-wide deal.
For a league in transition, that leaves Iowa State a step behind several of its peers in the revenue chase. BYU, Oklahoma State and Kansas have already announced their own jersey sponsorships, while Iowa State is still without one of its own. The program will still benefit from the broader conference arrangement, but the absence of a separate deal is a reminder that not every Big 12 school is navigating this new marketplace at the same pace. [Read more 🡒]
Jimmy Rogers Is Setting An Early Tone Iowa State Fans Will Feel
When Jimmy Rogers met the media on the first day of fall camp, he sounded like a coach eager to turn a new chapter into an immediate standard. Introduced in December 2025 as Iowa States head football coach, Rogers framed the early stages of camp around progress, roster depth and the kind of player development that can keep a program competitive when the season starts to tighten.
For Cyclones fans, the early message matters because it gives a first look at how Rogers wants this team to operate before a snap is played. He did not talk like someone focused on shortcuts, but like a coach intent on building something sturdy, with enough depth to survive the grind and enough development to raise the level of the roster over time. The next few weeks should start to show how much of that tone carries onto the field. [Read more 🡒]