Rico Dowdle Camp Update — August 31: The Job Question Goes to Week One
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Cut day left Rico Dowdle in a three-man backfield with Jaylen Warren and rookie Eli Heidenreich after Kaleb Johnson was traded to Green Bay. Dowdle sat the finale with the rest of the core players, so preseason ends with the split unscored: one shared game, five carries apiece.
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Rico Dowdle will open his first Pittsburgh season in a backfield of three. Over cut-day weekend the Steelers traded Kaleb Johnson to Green Bay — first reported by Jeremy Fowler at ESPN, confirmed on the team's official transaction list per Teresa Varley at Steelers.com — released Travis Homer, and waived Lew Nichols, who cleared waivers unclaimed Monday, per Alex Kozora at Steelers Depot. Rookie Eli Heidenreich won the number three job over Homer and Nichols, per Brian Batko's 53-man analysis at Steelers.com — a seventh-round pick out of Navy, per Jack Markowski at Sports Illustrated's All Steelers — and no back was claimed off waivers behind them. Dowdle and Jaylen Warren are the veterans of the room, and that is the shape it took out of cut day.
The split between those two veterans, though, ends August unscored. Dowdle sat Thursday's finale in Buffalo — Bob Labriola at Steelers.com named him among the 27 core players held out — and so did Warren, which means the question this file turns on got no new evidence and can get none before the opener. The standing ledger is still one game: five carries for 18 yards for Dowdle, five for 17 for Warren, plus Dowdle's one catch, in the 17-to-nothing Jets loss that remains the only game the two have shared. Mark Kaboly's August first projection of Dowdle as the main guy at 65 to 70 percent of the snaps, per Andrew Vasquez at Steelers Wire, and the even rotation the first live game showed are both exactly where they were a week ago. Preseason is over, and it declined to pick.
Back in June we said the runner was proven — back-to-back thousand-yard seasons — and the job was not, with the Mike McCarthy connection from Dallas as the thumb on the scale. The thumb still has not shown up in any usage, and now it cannot until the games are real. What cut day added is that the answer, whenever it comes, will be split two ways and not three. We'll pick this up again when real snaps arrive.
_Data via nflverse._
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