Will Howard Now Knows Why
by Bo Marchionte
@bomarchionte | College2Pro.com
Published August 10, 2026, 4:34 PM
There is a line in Moneyball that has always felt bigger than baseball.
“We’re all told at some point in time that we can no longer play the children’s game, we just don’t… don’t know when that’s gonna be. Some of us are told at eighteen, some of us are told at forty, but we’re all told.”
Football has its own date for delivering that message.
6 p.m. ET.
Cutdown day.
I first felt the agony of it back in 2009 when former Maryland linebacker Chase Bullock.
Bullock signed as an undrafted free agent with the Arizona Cardinals on April 27, 2009. He was waived on September 4, 2009. It was just a shitty day that day learning of his release.
Think about everything required just to make it close enough to hear those dreaded words.
Pop Warner games when the helmet swallowed half your head. The ride home with Dad telling you that you played well then reminding you where you needed to get better.
The first big play in high school when, maybe for the first time, you wondered how far football could take you.
The first college recruiter who called.
The first NFL scout who showed up on campus and asked your coach about you.
Then came everything nobody put on a highlight reel.
The 6 a.m. lifts. The ankles taped before practice. The ice bags afterward. Film rooms. Position meetings. Scout-team reps. Extra routes. Another set in the weight room. Another summer spent preparing while somebody else was at the beach.
Years of accumulating tiny football moments until suddenly there aren’t any more steps to climb.
Some Reach the Summit Some Don’t
There is only an NFL roster.
And 53 chairs.
That is why I love preseason football.
Call the games meaningless if you want.
I can’t.
Not after spending a large part of my own football journey interacting with well over a thousand prospects trying to navigate the tiny opening between college football and the NFL. I’ve watched players become draft picks, undrafted free agents, practice-squad bodies and NFL starters.
I’ve also watched damn good football players disappear from the league almost overnight.
That’s the cruel mathematics of August.
For every name we celebrate for making a roster, another name gets erased from the depth chart.
Second Chances Don’t Come Often
Monday afternoon in Latrobe offered a reminder of exactly how much playing this game means.
Will Howard couldn’t hide it.
“I’m so fired up,” the Steelers quarterback said about playing Green Bay Thursday night. “I can’t wait for the game.”
Think about who’s saying that.
Howard played quarterback at Ohio State. His last live game was January 20, 2025, against Notre Dame with a national championship sitting on the other side of sixty minutes.
He won it.
Howard stood on the tallest mountain college football has to offer. Confetti. Trophy. National champion.
Now?
He’s excited as hell about a preseason game.
And I absolutely love it.
Howard lost his first NFL preseason to injury last summer and never appeared in a regular-season game. More than a year has passed since another team was actually permitted to hit him.
“I know everyone says preseason isn’t real football,” Howard said Monday. “But to me it is.”
Maybe that’s the line everyone should remember Thursday night.
Because Howard is one of the fortunate ones. Pittsburgh kept him around long enough to get another August.
Tune In Not Out
Plenty of players won’t get another one.
Watch the fourth quarter of these preseason games when the stars are wearing baseball caps and television audiences are beginning to disappear.
Look closer.
That backup guard fighting through one more pass-rush rep might have invested a decade in that snap.
The receiver you’ve never heard of might be running the most important eight-yard comeback route of his life.
A linebacker covering a kickoff might understand perfectly well that one missed tackle could become the final piece of NFL film he ever produces.
That’s not meaningless football.
That’s desperation wrapped inside opportunity.
It’s reality television in it’s purest form.
Someone tells you the organization is going in another direction.
Turn in the playbook.
Thank you.
And suddenly the children’s game you’ve played nearly your entire life might be finished.
So yeah.
I love preseason football.
I love the sloppy fourth quarters. I love jersey numbers I don’t immediately recognize. I love watching the guy at the bottom of the roster celebrate a sack like he just won the Super Bowl.
I’ve been in film rooms. Good plays matter and stacking them helps.
Thursday night at Acrisure Stadium, Will Howard will finally get football back.
So will hundreds of players around the league.
Some are beginning careers.
Some are saving them.
And some unknowingly are playing the children’s game for the very last time.
They just don’t know when they’re going to be told.
I love preseason football.
Photo Credit Frank Hyatt/College2Pro.com
