The Pittsburgh Steelers held their pre draft press conference on Monday and while general manager Kevin Colbert and head coach Mike Tomlin didn’t reveal any earth shattering news during it, they both again talked about the good depth of this year’s draft class.
“We are picking at 15 and the player that’s going to be available to us at 15 in year’s past, you may have had to been picking at seven or maybe eight to get the same quality of player,” said Colbert. “There’s easily 15 players available that we’ll be very happy with if we’re able to pick them. And I think you can go and say there’s at least 19 that you could say you’d be happy to get at pick No. 15.”
Colbert also talked the trade up and down options in the first round.
“We won’t be trading up because we can’t,” said Colbert. “We traded away last year’s third-round pick. In order to move up in the first-round, you would usually have to include that in the package. We have a supplemental pick in the third-round, but you cant trade those. So there won’t be any movement up on our part, I can say that pretty sure.”
Colbert did, however, say that moving down in round one is a possibility.
“Obviously we still could still trade down and with the depth of this draft, I think it’s a real possibility, or at least that’s an option that’s available to us,” he said. “If we stay where we are, there’re probably a few positions that are off the table, but if we traded back, there would be no position that’s off the table because, again, it’s a special group of players.”
Colbert later said that while they don’t adhere to the trade chart themselves, they do use it as a guide to help decipher what another team might be thinking.
“We won’t ever make a trade based on the chart,” said Colbert. If we want a player, we’ll go and get that player.”
