Today, training camp opens at St. Vincent College for the Pittsburgh Steelers. After an unconventional offseason and a lot of new faces around the team, their work in camp will be the first time to see all of the new pieces come together.

There’s a lot riding on this season, believe it or not. While the hope is to obviously appear as a legitimate Super Bowl contender, the true goal of 2025 is to break the playoff win drought, which was extended to eight years last season when the Steelers were bounced in the wild card round.

Their embarrassing collapse to the season and subsequent postseason catastrophe sparked a flurry of roster vhanges for the Steelers, coming in bigger and bolder ways than many fans are used to.

Before camp really gets underway, however, I wanted to get my bold takes on the Steelers in 2025 in. Above all else, I am excited to see just how wrong I was by season’s end!

1: Jaylen Warren Establishes Himself As An Upper-Tier Running Back

The Steelers’ offense was dealt a blow when Najee Harris, the team’s first round pick in 2021, departed in free agency and left for the Los Angeles Chargers.

Harris was a polarizing figure in Pittsburgh. At a position that can be frequently hampered by injury, Harris started every single game over his four years as a Steeler, and was a workhorse on the field.

However, his running style formed more into an east-west form, and Harris rarely broke out for the big yardage run that makes a good running game. Despite averaging over 1,000 yards a season, the longest run of his NFL career so far is 37, set back in his rookie year.

But however you feel about him, it can’t be denied that his absence left a major hole in their lineup. Harris accounted for 17 starts, 569 snaps, and 50.4% of the team’s offensive work. Though the Steelers did draft Kaleb Johnson out of Iowa in the third round back in April and signed Kenneth Gainwell in free agency, the job of the starting running back now falls to Warren.

Warren, an undrafted free agent who the Steelers signed in 2022, is coming off a 15-game season where he ran for 511 yards on 120 carries (an average of 4.3 yards a carry). Two years ago, he ran for 784 yards and averaged 5.3 yarda a carry.

Warren, for my money, is one of the most underrated running backs in the NFL. Now with a full chance to showcase what he can do, I’m really excited to see how he performs.

I think, by this time next year when we rank the 32 NFL starting running backs, Warren will be in the top half.