Analytics are a hot topic in football. They can be used in a number of ways, from player evaluation to coaching decisions, but former Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert believes they’re being overused. In an interview on The North Catholic Athletic Podcast, Colbert was asked about whether analytics are overused in football.
“I do,” Colbert said. “At the end of my career with the Steelers, obviously it came into play, and I used to encourage our younger scouts and say, ‘Keep me up to date. Tell me what I’m missing.’ We had analytics people, and I used to challenge them. I said, ‘When you guys can measure the intangibles, let me know.’ Because that’s the most important thing.”
Colbert said decisions like when to go for it on fourth down or other in-game decisions are ones that essentially should be made by gut feeling. He said analytics in that context don’t account for the crowd, the health of the team, or recent player performance.
“You as the coach or you as that player has to be able to make critical decisions under pressure situations. And I don’t think there is any analytic that can measure that,” he said. “I don’t think there’s an intangible that can measure it, it’s just that feel that that coach may have to have at a certain point and his trust in that player to make that play in a critical situation.”
While Colbert didn’t touch on analytics as a player-evaluation tool much in the interview besides what he told scouts, the Steelers routinely had (and still have) one of the smallest analytics departments in the league. Colbert relied on in-person scouting as he and Mike Tomlin were a fixture at college Pro Days, something that’s carried over with Omar Khan and Tomlin.
There’s no right or wrong way to handle scouting in football. Some teams and organizations have a heavier focus and lean on analytics, and some prefer the eye test more. For the Steelers, Tomlin seems to prefer the eye test as Colbert did. During the 2023 season, Patrick Peterson said Tomlin doesn’t rely on analytics when game planning or in advance scouting.
The league is evolving though, and analytics are becoming a bigger part of how players are viewed. Take the Defensive Player of the Year race, for example. Myles Garrett won the award largely due to the pass-rush win rate metric despite having worse traditional box score statistics than T.J. Watt and others. It’s not as if the Steelers completely ignored analytics under Colbert — nor do they now — but they’re definitely slower to embrace them and seem to prefer more traditional scouting methods.
At least in the case of their 2023 draft, the first under Khan, their methods are working. The team got really nice production out of rookies Joey Porter Jr., Keeanu Benton and Nick Herbig as well as some flashes from Broderick Jones and Darnell Washington. But the Steelers’ small analytics staff and Colbert’s comments show that the team isn’t and hasn’t embraced analytics like some around the league.
