Steelers Riley Nowakowski Uniqueness

New Offensive Staff Should Utilize Nowakowski

by Bo Marchionte
@bomarchionte | College2Pro.com
Published June 3, 2026, 7:29 PM

Riley Nowakowski: The Walk-On Who Refused to Stay in One Lane

Betting on Himself

Arrived at Wisconsin as a walk-on linebacker in 2020.
Shared the linebacker room with future Steelers teammate Nick Herbig.
Earned four Academic All-Big Ten honors.
Played four different positions during his college career.
Never started his journey with scholarship expectations—only opportunity.

The journey to the NFL rarely follows a straight line. For Steelers fifth-round selection Riley Nowakowski, the road to Pittsburgh looked more like a maze.

Long before hearing his name called with the 159th overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, Nowakowski arrived at Wisconsin as a walk-on linebacker carrying little fanfare and even fewer guarantees. He wasn’t a prized recruit expected to become the face of a program. He was simply another player trying to find a way onto the field.

That challenge became even steeper when he found himself sharing a position room with one of the nation’s most explosive defenders.

“Yeah, so I was just not playing a whole lot, and really had no chance,” Nowakowski said of getting on the field. ”Actually, fun fact, Nick Herbig was in the same room as we were the same grade, so he was playing ahead of me, and he’s, as you can tell, he’s a little better.”

Riley laughs out loud when joking around about Herbig, he emphasizes he is in fact the real deal.

The quote perfectly captures the self-awareness and humility that have followed Nowakowski throughout his football career. There was no bitterness. No excuses. Just an honest evaluation of the situation and a willingness to adapt.

Many players facing limited opportunities would have transferred immediately or searched for an easier path. Instead, Nowakowski remained committed to Wisconsin while looking for any possible avenue to contribute.

That mentality was hardly surprising.

As a high school senior in Wisconsin, he was recognized as one of the state’s premier defensive players, earning First-Team All-State honors while collecting 126 tackles, 29 tackles for loss, three sacks, four forced fumbles and two interceptions. He was also awarded the prestigious John Anderson Award as Wisconsin’s top senior linebacker.

The Day They Asked Him to Change Everything

Nowakowski’s Positional Changes

2020 Wisconsin: Linebacker
2021 Wisconsin: Linebacker
2022 Wisconsin: Fullback
2023 Wisconsin: Fullback
2024 Wisconsin: Tight End
2025 Indiana: Tight End

The reality of college football is that every player wants an opportunity. The difficult part is deciding what you’re willing to do when that opportunity arrives wearing a different jersey number than the one you imagined.

For Nowakowski, Wisconsin coaches came with a simple proposition.

There wasn’t much playing time available at linebacker. The path ahead was crowded. Meanwhile, another position room suddenly had a vacancy.

Most players would have viewed it as starting over.

Nowakowski viewed it as a chance.

“So just ended up, they said, ‘Hey, like, if you want to see the field more, like our second fullback had transfers, like, hey, like, you can go play fullback, we need somebody to fill that hole,’ and I was like, yeah, of course, you know, whatever I can do to help out.”

Those last seven words tell the story.

Whatever I can do to help out.

They are words coaches love because they are spoken less frequently than people realize. Football players talk about team-first attitudes all the time. Living it is another matter entirely.

Nowakowski wasn’t chasing statistics. He wasn’t looking for a shortcut to recognition. He simply wanted to contribute.

The move required a different mindset. Linebackers attack. Fullbacks absorb punishment. The position rarely earns headlines, but it often determines whether offenses stay on schedule.

For a former all-state linebacker who once piled up tackles in Wisconsin high school football, the transition could have been frustrating.

Instead, it became another chapter in a story built reinvent himself around adaptability.

Years later, NFL evaluators would see a versatile offensive weapon.

At the time, Wisconsin simply saw a player willing to do whatever was necessary.

And as it turned out, football wasn’t finished asking Nowakowski to.

A Fullback Without a Position

College Offensive Production

2020 Wisconsin: None
2021 Wisconsin: None
2022 Wisconsin: None
2023 Wisconsin: 7 catches for 57 yards and one touchdown
2024 Wisconsin: 11catches for 74 yards
2025 Indiana: 32 catches for 357 yards and two touchdowns & two carries for two yards and two touchdowns

Sometimes timing changes everything.

After learning an entirely new position, Nowakowski finally appeared to have found a home at fullback. Then Wisconsin changed coaching staffs.

Luke Fickell arrived in Madison. Phil Longo arrived with him. The offense changed.

And suddenly the position Nowakowski had worked so hard to learn no longer existed.

“We had an air raid offense, so it’s no longer a fullback, so they said you can either be a tight end or running back,” Nowakowski said.

For a second time, football asked him to start over.

The easier path might have been frustration. Instead, he looked at the roster and made another practical decision.

“We had a good running back room at the time, we had Braelon Allen in there, so I was like, you know what, like maybe I should try my hand at tight end.”

Just like that, another transition began.

Most tight ends have years of experience catching passes, running routes and understanding coverages. Nowakowski was learning those lessons in real time.

Yet the previous position changes had quietly prepared him for the challenge.

The linebacker background provided toughness.

The fullback experience taught leverage and blocking.

The new tight end role allowed him to combine both.

By 2024, he was beginning to carve out a role within Wisconsin’s offense. The statistics remained modest, but coaches saw a player becoming increasingly valuable because he could line up almost anywhere.

That versatility would soon become his calling card.

The former walk-on who couldn’t find the field was now becoming one of the most unique players on it.

And the biggest season of his career was waiting just around the corner.

The Indiana Breakthrough

NFL Combine Results

Height: 6’2 ¼
Weight: 250
Arm: 31 ½”
Hand: 8 ¾
Forty: 4.66
10-yard split: 1.7
Vertical Jump: 33.5”
Broad Jump: 9’11”

By the time Nowakowski arrived at Indiana, he had already spent years proving he could adapt.

What he hadn’t yet received was an opportunity to show everything he could do.

That changed quickly under Curt Cignetti.

Indiana was building one of the nation’s most surprising success stories, and Nowakowski fit perfectly within the program’s culture. He wasn’t flashy. He wasn’t a former five-star recruit. He was a player who understood preparation, sacrifice and consistency.

Those traits suddenly had a larger stage.

The numbers reflected it.

After catching just 18 passes during his final two seasons at Wisconsin, Nowakowski exploded for 32 receptions, more than 350 receiving yards and two touchdowns. Near the goal line, Indiana found additional ways to utilize him. His only two rushing attempts of the season both resulted in touchdowns.

The production earned him recognition throughout the conference.

More importantly, it earned attention from NFL teams.

Scouts weren’t just seeing statistics. They were seeing possibilities.

At 250 pounds, he moved differently than many players his size. At the NFL Combine, he posted a 4.66-second forty-yard dash while displaying the athleticism that had quietly developed through years of positional changes.

The player who once couldn’t find a role had suddenly become difficult to define.

Was he a tight end?

A fullback?

An H-back?

The answer was becoming all of the above.

And that flexibility made him particularly attractive to professional coaches searching for players capable of creating matchup problems.

One organization, in particular, saw tremendous value in exactly that type of player.

The Pittsburgh Steelers.