Four padded practices into his professional career, Max Iheanachor has already forced the Steelers beat to ask the question out loud: Steelers Depot wondered this week whether the rookie will claim a starting job after an impressive debut in pads. So let us answer it properly, with the depth chart, the history of first-round tackles, and the injury math this position never escapes.
Our answer: yes, Iheanachor starts games in 2026. Probably not in Week 1. Almost certainly by December. Here is the reasoning.
Where he actually sits
The current depth chart is unambiguous: Broderick Jones at left tackle, Troy Fautanu at right tackle, and Iheanachor listed as Fautanu's backup. The rookie is 6-6 and 321 pounds, the biggest of the tackles, and he has been rotating with the starting units since before the pads went on, which is how a staff treats a player it is grooming rather than stashing. Alex Kozora's initial rookie-class impressions put him at the front of the class.
Now the complication: the man directly ahead of him just got ranked among the best offensive linemen in football by an independent line analyst. Nobody is benching Troy Fautanu. If Iheanachor's path ran only through the right side, this would be a redshirt conversation.
It does not run only through the right side.
The three doors
Door one: the left side, on merit. Broderick Jones is 25, in year four, and still carrying the most examined game of any Steelers lineman. He is coming back from the neck injury that ended his 2025, rebuilding his weight and conditioning on the way in. The organization used the 21st pick on a tackle while employing two former first-round tackles. That is not decoration; that is a hedge with a jersey number. If Jones's September looks like his rockiest stretches instead of his best ones, the swap is sitting right there, and a rookie playing well in relief has a way of never giving the job back. Note the asymmetry: Iheanachor backs up the right side on paper, but swing tackles cross-train from the first week of camp, and the first-round pedigree is exactly why you draft one who can play both.
Door two: the injury math. This is the boring door and the most likely one. Offensive tackles absorb attrition every single season; the Steelers just lived it, losing Jones to a neck injury in November. Five tackles are in camp, two will dress most Sundays, and seventeen games is a long time. First-round tackles drafted in the 15-to-30 range almost always end up starting games as rookies for precisely this reason. The question "will the rookie tackle start" is usually answered by an ambulance cart, not a depth chart.
Door three: the jumbo package now, the job later. McCarthy offenses have long used a sixth lineman as an extra tight end in heavy sets. A 321-pound rookie who is winning padded practices is the obvious candidate, and it is the classic on-ramp: eligible-tackle snaps in September, spot start by November, real job the following camp. Even in the slowest version of this timeline, he is on the field in year one.
What we are actually predicting
Put numbers on it, so we can be graded later: spot starts due to injury or rotation, very likely (call it four-in-five). A permanent takeover of a tackle job before season's end, genuinely possible but not our base case (one-in-three, and it is Jones's side, not Fautanu's, where that scenario lives). Zero starts all season would require both veteran tackles playing seventeen healthy, quality games, which would be delightful for Pittsburgh and would still make Iheanachor a fine redshirt.
The tell to watch is simple and close: preseason snap deployment. If the rookie's first-team work against Green Bay comes at left tackle rather than right, the staff is telling you which door they consider live. We will be watching for exactly that on the 13th, and this piece gets graded either way, because that is what we do here.
