Steelers Now
FRISCO, Texas — The Pittsburgh Steelers might be in danger of losing assistant general manager Andy Weidl to the Atlanta Falcons.
The Falcons completed a virtual interview with Weidl on Thursday. They’re just getting their process of hiring a general manager started, after having previously hired Matt Ryan as president of football operations and Kevin Stefanski as head coach.
The only team with a general manager vacancy, the Falcons can take their time with their process, so it might be a while before we know whether or not Weidl will be staying in his hometown for 2026.
Read more: Saunders’ Steelers Notes from the Road: Andy Weidl’s Impact, Some Words About Ketchup (+)I don’t get the sense that Weidl was some kind of favored-status candidate coming into the process for Atlanta, though that can always change as the interview process moves forward. While I think he’s deserving of the promotion, Weidl will probably be back in Pittsburgh.
The moment, though, got me thinking about Weidl and his impact on the Steelers. His fingerprints are all over the roster, with the team’s trenches out rebuild over the last three years looking quite obviously a lot like the one he helped construct in Philadelphia.
The great thing about linemen is that when you find good ones, they tend to stick around for a while. It’s very possible that the Steelers could have Weidl’s young linemen like Zach Frazier, Mason McCormick, Troy Fautanu and Derrick Harmon around for another decade. That’s a heck of an on-field legacy.
It goes further than that, though. I was walking through the lobby of the hotel here in Frisco where the Shrine Bowl media and team interviews take place, and they were a collection of Steelers scouts having a conversation in a group around Kelvin Fisher — the longest-tenure and most experienced college scout on the team.
But beside Fisher and a few others, the vast majority of the team’s scouts are more recent additions. Of the entire college scouting department, only former Steelers players Mark Bruener and Chidi Iwuoma pre-date Weidl.
It’s a completely new staff, and so far, the results have been pretty good. Maybe that’s all Weidl and Omar Khan at the top, but I think the modernization of the team’s scouting staff and processes will also be a legacy that Weidl leaves behind, when he eventually does earn that promotion.
Ketchup makes for a very odd source of civic pride. But nonetheless, us Pittsburghers have turned it into one.
Ketchup was not, of course, invented in Pittsburgh. In fact, we’re not even sure where it was invented or where the word itself came from. Some think it’s Chineses, other Malay, and others still, French.
Tomato ketchup — yes, there used to be other kinds — was invented in the late 1700s or early 1800s in America, which makes sense, because tomatoes are American in origin. The first known published recipe for tomato ketchup was written by James Mease,...
