The Pittsburgh Steelers‘ first-round pick Max Iheanachor is opening his rookie season with an off-field scare. Burglars broke into his Duquesne Heights home last month, making off with a haul valuable enough to leave the rookie counting a serious loss. No suspects have been named.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
“Steelers first-round pick Max Iheanachor’s home was burglarized on Aug. 26, the night before the preseason game in Buffalo. It’s the latest in an unfortunate trend targeting pro athletes,” Mike DeFabo posted on X.
According to a Pittsburgh police spokesperson, the two occupants of Max Iheanachor’s home reported that somewhere between $150,000 and $200,000 worth of jewelry and designer bags went missing, as reported by The Athletic‘s Mike DeFabo.
The break-in happened on Bradley Street in the Duquesne Heights section of Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington neighborhood, sometime between 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
According to the two occupants, they left the house locked up, garage included, for those three hours. When they got back, the garage door was open, and a window had been smashed with a rock.
The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police is still investigating, and so far there are no arrests and no known suspects.
It’s a story that’s become sadly familiar around the league. Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Joe Burrow have all dealt with home burglaries in the past. Most recently, Eagles running back Saquon Barkley had a scare of his own in July when someone attempted to break into his house while his family was inside. Thankfully, nobody was hurt that time, and nothing was even taken.
For Iheanachor, this couldn’t have come at a worse moment.
The Steelers took him 21st overall in this year’s draft, and he’d earned that kind of attention. He had stepped into a full-time starting role in 2024, giving up just three sacks and 21 pressures across 469 pass-blocking snaps.
In 2025, he improved further, giving up just 14 pressures on 484 snaps, and not getting sacked once all season (per PFF), even while facing David Bailey of Texas Tech, a second-overall pick in the 2026 draft.
However, with his first regular-season game less than a week away, he faces a problem neither studying film nor footwork drills can solve.
What’s next for rookie Max Iheanachor
Iheanachor missed the first two preseason games with an injury, so the Buffalo Bills game was really his only chance to show what he could do. He entered during the second quarter.
It wasn’t a flawless outing. He gave up a sack to Will Howard early on. But he also came through in a big way, throwing a key block that sprung fellow rookie running back Eli Heidenreich for a touchdown.
What Iheanachor showed against Buffalo is a reasonable case for patience. Though he allowed a sack on one of his very first NFL snaps, which happens to a lot of rookies. But he settled in from there and handled himself well across 35 snaps the rest of the way.
The timing of all this matters more than usual. The Steelers are heading into Week 1 without settling one of their biggest questions. With the Falcons coming to town on September 13, Pittsburgh still hasn’t said who’s starting at right tackle. With Broderick Jones now traded to the Cowboys, the right tackle job has come down to two names, Dylan Cook and Iheanachor.
Right now, Cook looks like the favorite, having taken the bulk of first-team reps since May. Still, nothing is locked in.
Even Aaron Rodgers seems to like what he’s seeing. Asked last week whether he’d have any concerns about a rookie starting at tackle in what could be his final NFL season, Rodgers didn’t hesitate.
“No,” he told reporters, per Chris Adamski of Tribune Live.
There’s one more thing working in Iheanachor’s favor. Cook is the team’s only tackle who can swing to either side, which makes him valuable as a backup and in jumbo packages. That flexibility alone could end up tipping the starting job toward Iheanachor.