Steelers Big Board: Who To Pick At #49

This is the first of two articles that have me very excited, because they begin the process of really digging in to how the distribution of available talent will influence the Pittsburgh Steelers’ draft picks. This is one of the special things a Big Board lets us do that player lists and scouting reports do not – we can turn the draft around and view it from various angles. “Who will be there to choose” is one of the best.

Over the years I have learned to divide draft talent of any given year into six rough tiers, always remembering that those groupings will bleed into each other toward the edges. The Steelers will be targeting what I call the Late-1st Tier, which translates to those players who’d be considered fringe-1st prospects in that mythical thing called an “average year.” The first group is by far the smallest:

“Colbert Specials”. These are the rare players with obvious HOF potential who just stand out as different. Every class has a few. I can remember no class with less than four nor as many as ten. In 2020 the undoubted members of this club include:

Top-Tier “Colbert Specials”

There should be no dispute about any of those, especially for Steelers fans who will be at least 40 picks too late. The only doubts will come from who I left out. Read on.

Mid-1st Tier. The best of these have good claims to Colbert Special status but do not make it because real experts have found nits to pick. Consider, e.g., the concerns over Tagovailoa’s durability. The rest of the group are those prospects who’d be newsworthy shocks if they fell out of Round 1. These are the Top 5-20(?) of a typical draft class.

NOTE: The Big Board entries at the end of this piece use Steeler specific grades. For the body of this article series I am trying to get at an all-teams grade based on my understanding of the consensus opinion. I have a well founded opinion on that consensus, but it should not be taken as a criticism if you have assigned a different grade based on direct film study. You are one of the people who go into the average; it is not a standard that you get measured against.

2020 Prospects with Solid-1st Grades

Up above I described how the edges blur at the top of this group, but it should be noted that this happens toward the bottom as well. I would like personally drop Edge Rushers Epenesa and Gross-Matos, and possibly ILB Patrick Queen, to the to fringe-1st group because they seem a little less complete than I’d like. They stay here nevertheless because those groups are so thin in 2020, and the demand is so high, that I can’t see them falling down to where they might belong in in some other year. You should also remember that I rarely scout these players myself, and instead try to collate the opinions from every possible Internet and media source, along with what comes out in discussions with you all. My personal opinions don’t enter into the equation as much as you’d think. Speaking of which, WR Laviska Shenault Jr. and SAF Grant Delpit have both been getting negative buzz that might justify moving them to the late-1st group. Please drop a comment if you have informed thoughts on the matter.

That is a pretty hefty number of players for this tier, but not stunning. There should be around 15-20 names on average, and this year there are 22. It is important because that leaves only six open spots for the rest of Round 1, and this year’s class of late-1st talents is enormous. That is why Pittsburgh is almost certain to do well in the middle of Round 2.

Fringe-1st Tier. Top 20-40 talent. These are the players that have realistic hopes of getting picked in Round 1 if things fall right. Often called late or fringe-1st prospects, many of them inevitably fall to Round 2 every year because the talent distribution and team needs do not match up in their favor.

NOTE: The following list includes everyone I put in the late-1st tier. Down below I will limit this to the players with a reasonable chance of being available when the Steelers pick at #49:

2020 Prospects with Late-1st Grades

32 players with late-1st grades? After a thick band of 22 with elite and solid-1st grades? A total of 54 players with a legitimate chance to go in the top 32?! That’s one hell of strong class at the top of the draft! But the spiky distribution may be even more noteworthy than the overall numbers. That Top-53 includes:

• 10 Wide Receivers;
• 12 Offensive Linemen;
• 6 Defensive Linemen;
• 7 Corners; and
• 5 Running Backs.

38 out of 54 players (70%) at just five of the ten position groups is a bit out of whack – but that tight cluster of RB’s is even stranger.

Five Round 1 talents is a very solid, though not unheard of number; but when it happens they’re supposed to be scattered among all three tiers: the Colbert Specials, the Mid-1sts, and the Late-1sts. It’s remarkable to see all five names clustered in a single one of those tiers, especially with only one broadly accepted prospect in the Round 2 group (Zack Moss), and one more with the Round 3’s (Eno Benjamin). What can you say about a RB distribution across the first five tiers that looks like this: 0-0-5-1-1? Yes, there are a liquid ton of prospects with very solid Round 4 & 5 grades, but still. Note that this view of the RB class seems to be a pretty universal sentiment with only a few names ever getting mentioned as competition for Moss and Benjamin, only Moss ever getting named in company with the Big 5, and Moss often falling down to a Round 3 grade. His grade varies more in the eye of the beholder than anyone else’s.

Round 2 Tier. Top 50-75 talent. I always want to round up to 100 here, but there are numerous studies showing that hit rates on draft picks drop significantly after Round 2. That equates to only 64 picks of course, but I expand that on both sides to account for weaker versus stronger classes.

Round 3 Tier. Top 100 talent. Somewhere around 75% of all the starters in the NFL are picked in the first three rounds. 3rd rounders are well behind 2nd rounders, but things do not level off in a typical draft until Round 4; i.e., after Pick # 100 or so on a broad average.

The tables with these names will have to wait for a follow-up article, but I can say that this is the point where the law of averages begins to catch up with this class. There are only a moderate number in each group, and the distribution begins to even out. There are clusters of talent at Edge, Safety, and Defensive Line, along with continued strength at Corner, Offensive Line (getting into the Guards), and Wide Receiver. The class may offer an overabundance of 1st and fringe-1st grades, but I don’t see more than 110-120 young men in all who would deserve Top-100 grades in an average year. Things come back to earth as you get into Day 3.

If you do a lot of mock drafts you’ll have noticed the drop off between Pick #102 and the pair of picks in Round 4 (#’s 124 and 135). There is usually a bargain to be had at 3:comp, but just 20 picks later things start to get very tight and the best options tend to be a Guard, a WR, or a random bargain; and even those picks tend to leave you lukewarm except the WR’s and maybe the Guards.

Day 3 Tier. Prospects who go in Rounds 4-7 because of lower boom potential, greater bust potential, or longer learning curves than those in the earlier rounds. The risk/reward/delay issues slowly get worse as you proceed down the draft.

Round 2 Targets – why I believe it will be a pick for the offense

The Steelers, a team with no real holes in the starting lineup, have an obvious path to take in the 2020 draft. At #49 they will hope to grab a Late-1st talent, which should be possible because the numbers are so unusually high. At #102 the team will look for solid value in the form of a Round 3 talent, with small odds of getting a Round-2 bargain talent; a bargain that would be much more likely in one of the densely populated positions.

I am on record as favoring a pick on the offensive side of the ball at #49, mainly from a sense of team justice. The Round 1 and Round 3 picks have already gone toward the defense (Fitzpatrick and Bush, yippee!), so I want to balance the scales by going offense in Round 2. Kevin Colbert routinely emphasizes his desire to be evenhanded in this way; I believe him; and thus offense gets a mental finger on the scale.

It’s tempting to earn rhetoric points by making a “higher needs” argument, but I don’t think that’s entirely fair. The Steelers could play a game tomorrow with no real holes on the starting roster; which means the team only has “wants”, not “needs.” OTOH, it is a little fair if you focus on a long term perspective. A really good offensive pick at RB, OL, or WR could find himself being a starter in 2021 or 2022, while an equally talented defensive prospect could easily be limited to sub package and depth duties throughout his rookie contract. The only exception I can imagine would be a 3-down Buck ILB good enough to be a ‘Vince Williams who can cover,’ and it would take a lot of luck to see one of those fall to either #49 or #102.

But the real reason I’m so confident in an offensive pick isn’t about my concepts of fairness or shadings on the need scale; it comes down to the distribution of late-1st talent across the different positions. Let’s get back to the actual names. I remind everyone that none of these players “should” fall all the way to #49. On average they would all be picked in the Top 40, and most of them will be. But not all. Not this year.

Round 2 Targets – the list of names

Remember that we have 25 players listed with elite or solid-1st grades, leaving only 14 empty spots to be filled before the Steelers go on the clock at #49. How many of the late-1st prospects are virtual locks to go in those 14? There are only six I would include:

• QB Jordan Love
• RB D’Andre Swift
• WR Justin Jefferson
• WR Denzel Mims
• CB Jeff Gladney; and
• CB C.J. Henderson.

That leaves the following prospects who could realistically be available at #49. Subtract the eight you believe are most likely to get picked, add a few back in to account for lower-ranked players that teams (apparently) reached for, and you’ll have the actual short list of Steeler targets:

25 prospects with an all-years grade from 20-40, with only 8 that will go too soon. Pretty nice odds! Even with the slight grade inflation that comes from using “Highest Value to a non-desperate team” as the measuring stick. If two-thirds of those are on offense, and we agree on offense winning the tiebreaker if all other things are equal, it is pretty easy to guess how the wind is going to blow.

Finally, here are the full Big Board entries for all the players with Round 1 grades on the HV scale, from bottom to top. Please note that the grades shown on the following table are Steelers-specific and account for lack of fit or long term openings on this particular roster. Please note that I have not dug into the Corners at all and will not vouch for anything more than, “too talented to fall far enough for Pittsburgh to be tempted.”

Big Board Entries for Early, Mid- and Late-1st Talents

Grades are by Highest Value (“HV#”) to the Steelers. Lack of fit with the 2020 Pittsburgh team results in a discount. An HV of 1:25 means the player is a reach for the Steelers at any point before Pick # 25 overall but good value at any point from the end of the 1st on. Getting that player in the early 2nd would be fine, while getting him at 2:14 would almost be a steal. NOTE: This results in some grade inflation for positions of want because we are talking about the “highest” grade, not the one where a player is expected to go; but grades are never pushed up just because of need. Players with the same HV# are more-or-less equivalent and organized alphabetically.

To be continued in an article focused on players who will be targeted for the picks at #’s 102, 124, and 135.