With Super Bowl LX’s Seattle Seahawks taking home the Lombardi Trophy in February, NFL teams began thinking about the 2026-27 season. Their thoughts began with the NFL Draft and drafting rising college athletes to their teams.
Every year, the location of the draft changes, with the last few being in Green Bay, Detroit and Kansas City. This year, the draft was held in Pittsburgh, with the Steelers hosting. At the beginning of the draft, many Steelers legends came onto the stage to kick off the draft, including Jerome Bettis, Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, Ben Roethlisberger and Hines Ward. They hyped up the thousands of fans that came to watch the first round of picks.
With the 32 NFL teams already locked in with their picks in the draft, the Raiders had the first pick, taking Fernando Mendoza, a quarterback from Indiana University. From there, the remaining teams made their picks, with the first ten picks being the Jets drafting David Bailey, Arizona drafting Jeremiyah Love, Tennessee drafting Arvell Reese, Kansas City drafting Mansoor Delane, Washington drafting Sonny Styles, New Orleans drafting Jordyn Tyson, Spencer Fano went with Cleveland, Francis Mauigoa went to the Giants and Caleb Downs went to Dallas.
With all of these picks, there were some changes made to the draft. One of the biggest was the time to lock in a teams pick, shifting from ten minutes to eight minutes. Many were unhappy about this change and hope it gets reversed for the 2027 draft.
“It’s unfortunate the Eagles traded up right in front of us whenever we were going to draft Makai Lemon,” said Elijah Cottrill (12). “Other than our first round pick, I think the rest of the draft did pretty well.”
On the first day of the draft, some students from high schools around the area had the chance to go on stage to celebrate and help with the draft. Those who went on stage had to be students from a WPIAL school who had an alumnus in their school’s history drafted in the first round to the NFL. In addition, the student had to be committed to playing football in college. Not only that, but only one senior from each school could go.
Representing Freedom, Cottrill was one of the few who made it on stage. In 1983, Freedom alumni Jimbo Covert was drafted in the first round by the Chicago Bears. With that, Cottrill is planning to pursue football at Geneva College in the fall, which made him a candidate to go on stage.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Cottrill. “The amount of people that are out there and the revenue to bring to the city is just a crazy experience overall.”