Despite reports earlier this year that the Detroit Lions or some other source were going to come after Pittsburgh Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert, that obviously never surfaced. The idea that Colbert would uproot himself at this stage of the game when he is literally taking the remainder of his career on a year-to-year basis is patently absurd.
The idea that the Steelers could lose one of their other top minds in the front office and scouting department, however, is much less absurd, and for example, we saw Omar Khan’s name get mentioned on the interview list for general manager openings multiple times this offseason.
Khan is the second-most well-known name in Pittsburgh’s front office behind Colbert, given the official title of Vice President of Football Business & Administration, and he is generally credited with managing the team’s complex salary cap puzzle year after year—he certainly has his work cut out for him on this round.
Despite his notoriety, however, he is not believed to be the successor to Colbert as general manager whenever he decides to retire, according to Mark Madden. Truth be told, this is something that we already ‘knew’, insofar as it could be known. The general understanding was that Brandon Hunt, the Pro Scouting Coordinator, is seen as the heir apparent.
But Madden blustered recently that Khan was recently informed he would not be Colbert’s successor, in spite of the fact that their intention is to keep the job in-house whenever it comes time to make that transition. He also claims, citing whatever source real or imaginary, that he is “not happy” about it.
Nobody would be happy about not being the successor to a job that you want, to state the obvious, and he obviously wants to be a general manager, given that he has accepted multiple opportunity for interview for general manager positions. But as I’ve written, it has been understood for a while now that, insofar as there is a line of succession, Khan is not the next on the list.
I have a hard time believing that Khan would not be aware of things that we are aware of, so I find it suspicious that there was suddenly this conversation taking place in which he was informed of this detail and that it was surprising enough to upset him.
But what we do here is relay what is reported and attempt to qualify it as best we can. What I’m saying here is that this is what Madden claims, and that you should probably take it with a grain of salt—and that the idea that Khan is not the successor is far from a new on in the first place. So there you go.
