It's never a good sign when an NFL wide receiver is entering his third NFL season with just 12 career catches under his belt. Sadly, that's the case for Roman Wilson. The Pittsburgh Steelers' 2024 third-round pick played just five offensive snaps as a rookie before an unspectacular 2025 campaign.
Then things quickly turned grimmer for Wilson. During the 2026 offseason, the Steelers traded for Michael Pittman Jr. and drafted Alabama wideout Germie Bernard in the second round. It looked like Wilson was already an afterthought.
But early in training camp, fans are finally seeing everything they hoped for from Wilson and his newfound connection with quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Wilson has been one of the hottest topics at Steelers training camp, as the young receiver has routinely shown the ability to create separation while extending outside of his framework to make impressive catches.
When the pads came on this week, Wilson was even better.
The Pittsburgh Steelers could finally get the version of Roman Wilson they hoped for after a strong connection with Aaron Rodgers
What was lacking last season was any sort of chemistry with his starting quarterback. Rodgers and Wilson were rarely on the same page, which is why Wilson reeled in just 12 of 21 targets for a 57.1 percent catch rate and a 47.6 percent success rate in 2025, per Pro Football Reference.
This wasn't due to dropped passes—as Wilson wasn't credited with a single drop last year—and it wasn't just a cluster of inaccurate throws from Rodgers. These two simply weren't on the same page.
While Rodgers and Wilson have still had some miscues early at Steelers camp, most of what we've witnessed has been everything we could have hoped for. Wilson has been running mostly with the first-team offense, usually as the team's slot receiver in '11' personnel. He's also been heavily targeted by Rodgers, even after the pads came on. Wilson has even been a go-to option in red-zone situations.
There's a reason for that—Wilson knows how to separate. This is an ability he possessed when the Steelers drafted him, but it was about harnessing that ability to be in the right place at the right time.
Last year, Rodgers showed so little trust in Wilson that the Steelers signed washed-up veterans Adam Thielen and Marquez Valdes-Scantling late in the season. The results weren't any better, for what it's worth.
In less than two weeks this summer, we went from thinking that Wilson was a bottom-of-the-roster player who wasn't even guaranteed to make the team to making fans believe he's the talented player we all thought he was as the No. 1 option on a national championship Michigan team.
Based on what we've witnessed at Steelers training camp so far, Wilson stands to have a prominent role on offense as a slot receiver, and it even appears there are a handful of plays designed to go to him—plays in which he is the first read on offense. This didn't happen last year.
We don't want to get our hopes too high for the connection between Aaron Rodgers and Roman Wilson in 2026, and there aren't many NFL receivers who can find success in Year 3 after doing hardly anything in their first two seasons. But Rodgers and Wilson have had time to iron out the kinks and build chemistry.
If this connection continues to grow, we might finally get the version of Roman Wilson we hoped for.
Add us as a preferred source on Google