I was lucky enough to attend the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft in Pittsburgh. On the whole, it was a great event. Pittsburgh is a fun city, the weather was wonderful, and it was fun to hang out with fans from across the NFL as they alternately cheered for their teams’ selections and booed Roger Goodell.
But mostly, attending Pittsburgh’s edition of the NFL Draft really just accomplished one thing: it made me miss Green Bay. Because the 2025 NFL Draft showed just how unique Green Bay really is.
Pittsburgh may be a fun city, but Green Bay is a city built around football.
The Packers and the NFL had an incredible asset when constructing their 2025 draft setup that the Steelers just couldn’t match: Lambeau Field. It was the backdrop for everything that happened in Green Bay a year ago, both literally and metaphorically. It loomed over the proceedings, a visual reminder of the history and magnitude of football in the city, in addition to providing key amenities as the draft played out; if you wanted somewhere to sit, there was essentially an entire stadium’s worth of bleachers at your disposal. And that’s not to mention the treat that is the Packers Hall of Fame. Even a franchise as storied as the Steelers (six Lombardi trophies is, of course, nothing to sneeze at) has a hard time matching that kind of feast for football history buffs, and there’s only one Lambeau Field.
The 2025 Draft was further enhanced by the Packers’ incredible Titletown District. Fan events blended seamlessly into the Packers’ existing fan-centric infrastructure, giving people plenty to see and do (and eat and drink) on site. The NFL would be wise to host future events with teams that have comparable entertainment districts near their stadiums.
The famous three rivers of Pittsburgh, unfortunately, put a pretty hard limit on that kind of experience. The Steelers have a pretty limited version of anything resembling Titletown, and what they do have is constricted by geography. You can’t build a 360-degree draft site around Acrisure Stadium because you’ll end up in the river, so the 2026 NFL Draft was essentially split into three areas: the fan activity area at Point State Park, a semi-formal interstitial area around the Pittsburgh Pirates’ PNC Park, and the actual “watch the draft” area with the ginormous stage you see on TV just outside the Steelers’ stadium. It felt considerably more disjointed than the Packers’ experience, and that’s not a value judgement on Pittsburgh, but just a reality of what they were dealing with.
If I do have a beef, though, it’s that it was really, really challenging to get to and from the actual NFL Draft site. My brother-in-law works in Pittsburgh, so we spent a considerable amount of time leveraging his knowledge to try to craft a plan to get into and out of Pittsburgh’s downtown area, which is notoriously difficult to navigate in the best of times with its maze of winding streets and bridges. Pittsburgh city officials recommended parking as far off-site as possible and taking one of the free “Football Flyer” shuttles to the draft site, and that’s what we ended up doing, landing at a park and ride that was supposed to be only about a 15 minute ride from downtown.
That’s where our troubles began. It took us more than an hour on the shuttle to actually get downtown, and that was a breeze compared to getting out. We left the draft at about 9:45 local time, just after the Detroit Lions picked (my brother-in-law is a Lions fan, judge away) and we spent more than two hours just trying to find a shuttle that wasn’t jam-packed with people. We were even turned away by one shuttle driver who had an empty bus, but said we weren’t boarding at the right place. Where was the right place? Well, he couldn’t tell us, but we weren’t in it, and he wouldn’t let us on the bus. All told, it took us more than three hours to escape Pittsburgh once we decided we’d had enough for the day.
In Green Bay, I watched with my dad until the commissioner announced pick 32, strolled about a mile to where we’d parked our car on someone’s lawn, and then made it to the interstate within about 15 minutes after that. It’s true there were considerably more people in Pittsburgh than there were in Green Bay, but it’s hard to think it couldn’t have been handled better.
Local media is claiming only minimal delays, but that’s not the full story. There may have been only 40 minute delays after the draft itself ended, but transportation problems were already well underway while the event was taking place. The structure of the city itself just made it hard to get 320,000 people in and out of the city in a timely manner.
But again, this is not to disparage Pittsburgh at all. Every draft site is going to have its foibles, and we knew going in that downtown was a rat’s nest. And there was plenty to like, too. Walking across Pittsburgh’s Roberto Clemente bridge to get to the draft was a blast, and part of the “path to the draft” setup sent us walking through PNC Park, which was neat to see. We also got cheesesteaks on site, which is going to be a win in my book any time.
But I missed Green Bay, too. Packers fans have something special in Lambeau Field, and we shouldn’t forget that, whether it’s hosting a Packers game on Sunday or the NFL Draft at some point in the future. It’s the crown jewel of the NFL for a reason, and seeing another city try to replicate the event the Packers put on showed us exactly why.
