Omar Khan described it as “an easy choice.” Mike Tomlin claimed “He has Steeler DNA” and with that the Pittsburgh Steelers drafted Derrick Harmon in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
Derrick Harmon played defensive tackle for Oregon in 2024 after playing his first three collegiate years in Michigan State. Harmon stands at 6’4” and a half and weighs 313. His 45 tackles, with 101⁄2 for loss, five sacks and four passes batted away in 13 starts were enough to earn him second team All American honors.
Mett Derrick Harmon, the Steelers 2025 First Round Draft pick. Photo Credit: Post-Gazette.com
Steel City Insider’s Jim Wexell rated Derrick Harmon as number 7 on his annual “Ass Kickers List” and his scribe Matt C. Steel declared “Harmon might be the guy that the Steelers tell the Chiefs ‘unless the player we like is still on the board.’”
Going into the 2024 season not only was the defensive line not seen as a weakness for the Steelers, it was viewed as a potentially rising strength.
Things looked very different when finishing Thanksgiving leftovers gave way to the Christmas rush as the Steelers were schooled by Derrick Henry first in the regular season, then again in the ridiculing suffered at the hands of the Ravens in the playoffs.
- Mike Tomlin did not blink when asked if this factored into the Steelers plans.
When asked if it was important to beef up his defensive line, he volunteered “Extreme urgency to be quite honest with you.” When asked if the struggles of his run defense fueled that urgency, Tomlin leaned in again detailing:
The tape is the tape, and so we’re behaving appropriately. You don’t have a chance to have a top-notch defense unless you’re smashing the run and getting after the quarterback, and this is a guy whose résumé says he’s capable of contributing in both areas.
Harmon’s name had been linked to the Steelers as soon as the pre-draft process began, but Pittsburgh had also been linked to Kenneth Grant, a nose tackle from Michigan. The thinking was that the Steelers need a big man in the center, akin to a modern day Casey Hampton, to stuff the run and allow Keeanu Benton to move from nose to end, as Gerald Williams had once done.
Grant was off the board long before the Steelers got their chance to pick, and Tomlin dashed any hopes of Harmon going to nose “I don’t think nose is his game, but the rush component at three and five, and some of those things, certainly.”
Video Highlights of Derrick Harmon
Here’s a quick look at some of Harmon’s highlights from his days with the Ducks and Spartans
https://youtu.be/SZKFszoOzCw?si=66txqDK8a2HirUeu
Hopefully, Derrick Harmon can quickly deploy some of that run stuffing magic against Derrick Henry.
Historical Resonance with Harmon
Derrick Harmon has been compared stylistically to Cam Heyward. Cam Heyward was the last defensive lineman drafted by the Steelers in the first round back in the 2011 NFL Draft. On that evening Kevin Colbert broke form and declared it to be a “Historic day for the franchise.”
- Neither Omar Khan nor Mike Tomlin were ready to take that plunge last night.
But the selection resonates with Steelers history in other ways. The Pittsburgh Steelers went into the 1969 NFL Draft facing a lot of pressure to draft a quarterback. Terry Hanratty was a hometown hero and a Notre Dame grad to boot at a time when Pittsburgh was still predominantly Catholic.
- Chuck Noll tuned out the noise and drafted Joe Greene.
He did take Hanratty in the second round, but that didn’t stop him from picking Terry Bradshaw a year later. Here in 2025 the Steelers admit to their need to add a quarterback, and many expected them to draft Shedeur Sanders. (Mel Kipper blasted them for not doing so. That’s another reason to like Harmon).
Like Noll before him, Mike Tomlin and Omar Khan kept their own counsel and drafted the defensive tackle. They could easily follow Noll’s template and draft a quarterback next. Expecting history to repeat itself isn’t realistic, but the Steelers and Derrick Harmon have already created some historical resonance.
Welcome to Steelers Nation Derrick Harmon.
