One Pittsburgh Steelers scouting note to pass along. As pointed out by Inside The League’s Neil Stratton, longtime Steelers scout Mike Butler officially retired in the fall. Stratton shared the news Friday on Twitter.
As Stratton points out, Butler is the son of Hall of Famer Jack Butler, who had a long and storied football career. It began as a defensive back for the Steelers, making four Pro Bowls and three All-Pro teams. He led the NFL with ten interceptions in 1957, though his most prolific game came at the end of the 1953 season, intercepting four passes against the Washington Redskins. Pittsburgh won 14-13 to finish the season at .500. Butler is one of only 20 players in NFL history to pick off four passes in a game and the only Steeler to ever do so.
A severe knee injury ended his career prematurely, leading him to take a scouting role with the team. He became the leader of BLESTO, one of the two league-wide scouting agencies that still exist today. Its acronym stands for: Bears-Lions-Eagles-Steelers Talent Organization and is the service the Steelers are part of today (the other league-wide scouting service is known as “National”).
These services held lay the ground work for upcoming draft classes, giving each team a head start on getting to know new and future prospects. Butler was inducted into the Hall of Fame just months before his death and holds the record for shortest enshrinement speech, three minutes and 42 seconds.
Mike Butler got his NFL start with the Steelers as an intern in 1983. He joined the Indianapolis Colts as a scout in 1987, remaining with the organization through 2005, moving up the ranks and eventually becoming the team’s Director of College Scouting. After spending two years as a scout for the Detroit Lions, he returned to the Steelers, where he served as an Area Scout. Though Pittsburgh doesn’t officially label regions, our tracking noted him primarily covering the East Coast. We spotted Butler at eight Pro Days last year, ranging from Syracuse to Maryland to West Virginia.
We had not spotted him on the trail this year and his name was removed from the team website, tracking with Stratton’s comments over his retirement.
It signifies another scouting change within the organization, a long-tenured group that’s seen plenty of turnover since Omar Khan replaced Kevin Colbert as GM in May of 2022.
