Germie Bernard Camp Update — August 31: A Touchdown to End the Audition
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Germie Bernard caught a thirteen-yard touchdown from Will Howard in the preseason finale, the one recorded line of his audition's final week. The elevated reps he had been absorbing ended when DK Metcalf and Michael Pittman returned to practice August twenty-fourth, and the third-receiver battle with Roman Wilson got no scoring at all.
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Germie Bernard closed his preseason with a touchdown. Will Howard's 13-yard scoring pass in Thursday's 28-to-27 loss in Buffalo went to Bernard, per Brian Batko at Steelers.com — and the fact that he was on the field at all is its own data point, since Bernard is absent from Bob Labriola's list of the 27 core players held out of the finale. That is the audition's one recorded line: beyond the score itself, no target count, snap count or receiving total for him surfaced in the week's coverage. It is a good line — six days after a Jets game of one target and zero catches — and it deserves its honest frame: the touchdown came from Will Howard, in a game the roster's veterans and starters sat out. It counts for what it is.
The bigger shift in Bernard's file happened three days before the game. DK Metcalf and Michael Pittman Junior both returned to practice Monday, August 20-fourth, per Chris Ward at Steelers Now — whose report notes that Roman Wilson and Bernard had been filling in during their absence. That absence is over, and with it the stretch of elevated reps our last episode said would remain Bernard's for at least another week. It lasted one more day. The runway a rookie gets when two veterans sit is exactly as long as the veterans' absence, and this one ended August 20-fourth.
On the roster itself: Batko's 53-man analysis at Steelers.com counts 11 rookies on the initial 53, all 10 draft picks +1 undrafted player, and the receiver room lost a body at the bottom, with Max Hurleman waived, per Teresa Varley at Steelers.com, and unclaimed when waivers cleared, per Alex Kozora at Steelers Depot. The battle with Roman Wilson for the third receiver job got no scoring at all: no beat charting in the week ranked the two, and Wilson's finale usage went unreported in our sources. It is unresolved, into September.
Back in June we said the boring thing about this rookie on purpose: rookie third receivers are lineup noise until targets say otherwise. The update after a full preseason: his production is one strong game, one quiet one, and one touchdown old, and the opportunity that inflated it in August has narrowed back to normal with the veterans on the field. Targets, once the games are real, will say the rest. We'll come back to this when the season starts answering.
_Data via nflverse._
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