Steelers news: Minkah Fitzpatrick earns All-Pro, Brian Flores interview with Cardinals, and more

It was an eventful week for Pittsburgh fans. The latest Steelers news involved Minkah Fitzpatrick being honored and Brian Flores potentially leaving soon.

While the 2022 season might be over for the Pittsburgh Steelers, there has been no shortage of news since the year ended for Mike Tomlin’s team. The biggest thing fans were hoping for immediately following the season was a Matt Canada firing on Black Monday, but that didn’t happen.

Fortunately, there was some positive news to come away from this week. As we all gear up for the Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs this week, here’s the latest Steelers news you need to know.

Steelers news

Let’s start with the good stuff. On Friday afternoon, the Associated Press released their official First-Team All-Pro list for the 2022 season. As many expected, Minkah Fitzpatrick made the cut. Though he fell short of the list last year, this is already the third time the Steelers safety has been dubbed as a First-Team All-Pro — putting him on a Hall of Fame pace in the first half of his career.

At just 26 years old, there is obviously plenty left in the tank. 49ers safety, Talanoa Hufango, barely topped Derwin James as the second safety voted in with First-Team All-Pro honors for 2022. No other Steelers player earned this honor this year. Cameron Heyward was the closest with 14 total votes but was still sixth in line among interior defenders.

More Steelers news

We knew that when the Pittsburgh Steelers signed Brian Flores to be their senior defensive assistant that he was destined for bigger and better things. During the first week following the regular season, teams are cleaning house, and Flores is getting interviews.

After earning an interview with the Cleveland Browns for their vacant defensive coordinator job, the Arizona Cardinals recently asked the Steelers permission to interview Flores for their head coaching vacancy — a job that, up until last week, belonged to Kliff Kingsbury.

With the interest that Flores has drawn already, there is very little chance he sticks around in Pittsburgh. He’s going to get a promotion from another team very soon.

NFL news

NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah recently released his NFL rookie rankings from the 2022 season. Despite strong performances down the stretch from George Pickens and Kenny Pickett, Jeremiah wasn’t very kind to this duo on his most recent list.

Jeremiah had Pickens ranked as the 17th-best rookie from the 2022 season, while Pickett was all the way down at 25th. Considering the position each player was thrust into this season, this seems pretty low. Pickett finished just behind players like Lions OLB James Houston and Falcons RB Tyler Allgeier. Sauce Gardner and Aidan Hutchenson were the top two players on the list, respectively.