Aside from a handful of individual workouts, including a key one with Georgia OT Amarius Mims today, the 2024 Pro Day circuit is complete. This means it’s time to compile our annual Pittsburgh Steelers Pro Day tracker and see what the results tell us. As we do every year, with the goal of being more complete and detailed each season, we keep tabs on the whereabouts of every Steelers’ personnel member we spot on the trail. Sometimes, it’s Mike Tomlin and Omar Khan. Sometimes, an area scout. But it’s all important to us as predictive power for who the team will draft later this month.
In total, we spotted specific Steelers’ personnel at 66 Pro Days. That’s fewer than last year but likely for reasons we’ll explain below.
Still, understand this list is not 100 percent complete. Unfortunately, there were several Power 5 schools we couldn’t confirm who from Pittsburgh attended. Those include Arkansas, Texas A&M, and Rutgers. And there’s always likely something we’re missing from the schools we have identified someone. Still, you won’t find a more complete and detailed list and analysis than this.
What are the takeaways? Let’s dive in.
MIKE TOMLIN/OMAR KHAN PRO DAY TRIPS
Georgia
Clemson
Alabama
Michigan
– Just four stops this year for the duo, the lowest number we’ve tracked for a Steelers head coach and general manager combo. By year dating back to 2021, here’s the same data.
2024: Four Pro Days
2023: Seven Pro Days
2022: Kevin Colbert 13 Pro Days, Mike Tomlin Eight Pro Days
2021: Nine Pro Days
2020: One Pro Day (circuit wiped out by COVID)
2019: Kevin Colbert 10 Pro Days, Mike Tomlin Four Pro Days
2018: Kevin Colbert Nine Pro Days, Mike Tomlin Seven Pro Days
2017: Kevin Colbert Eight Pro Days, Mike Tomlin Seven Pro Days
Mike Tomlin attended only four workouts in 2019, one of them being Michigan for LB Devin Bush, the team’s first-round pick. But Kevin Colbert went to ten, making 2024 the fewest combined Pro Days a Steelers/GM has attended since our tracking began in 2017, excluding the COVID year. It’s worth noting, and applies to the whole article, that with the Big 12 holding one conference Pro Day (of which media coverage was iffy and we only found one Steelers’ personnel member), there were simply fewer Pro Days than in years past. Which does have an impact on the data.
A messy league meeting schedule that bumped into a week of Pro Days did the team no favors. But if there’s a year for the Steelers to break their streak of attending the Pro Day of their first-round pick, this is it. You’d think, however, that if that “rule” is broken, the Steelers’ selection would’ve been among its list of pre-draft visitors.
Let’s look at where the Steelers’ coordinators and positional coaches attended.
COORDINATORS/POSITIONAL COACHES TRIPS
Offensive Coordinator Arthur Smith: Georgia, Clemson, Michigan, Duke, North Carolina (5)
Defensive Coordinator Teryl Austin: Georgia, Clemson, Alabama, Michigan (4)
Special Teams Coordinator Danny Smith: None
QBs Coach Tom Arth: South Alabama (1)
RBs Coach Eddie Faulkner: None
WRs Coach Zach Azzanni: Texas, Western Kentucky (2)
TEs Coach Alfredo Roberts: None
OL Coach Pat Meyer: Oregon State, Oregon, Washington (3)
Asst OL Coach Isaac Williams: Georgia State, Big 12 Pro Day (2)
Senior Offensive Asst Mike Sullivan: None
DL Coach Karl Dunbar: LSU (1)
ILB Coach Aaron Curry: Ohio State, Kentucky, North Carolina (3)
OLBs Coach Denzel Martin: None
DBs Coach Grady Brown: None
Defensive Quality Control Coach Jason Brooks: California (1)
– A heavy presence from the Steelers’ coordinators, totaling nine combined visits. Last year, we didn’t spot OC Matt Canada once on the Pro Day trail. For Smith, it helped Duke and UNC are separated by such a short drive but still, Smith ended up attending more Pro Days than Tomlin or Khan.
Combined, the Steelers’ positional coaches were spotted at 12 Pro Days—eight on the offensive side and five on the defensive side. Last year, that number sat at 21: ten on offense, nine on defense, and two stops by STs Coordinator Danny Smith. So, there was a noticeable decreased presence across the board.
– Meyer and Curry were the most active, attending three each. History says the team will draft at least one lineman and one inside linebacker. No surprise not to see Faulkner, Roberts, or Martin. Those are positions that don’t need to be drafted early, if at all. But zero trips for Grady Brown is surprising. Perhaps there was a personal issue because I would’ve put money on him popping up in a few places. Ike Taylor did attend three workouts. Maybe he was the team’s substitute for the cycle. And I’m not sure why Brooks was at Cal. But he was.
HIGHER-RANKING FRONT OFFICE PERSONNEL
Dan Colbert: 9 (Western Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Georgia State, Toledo, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Western Kentucky, Tennessee)
Dan Rooney Jr: 8 (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Auburn, East Carolina, Wake Forest, North Carolina, Duke)
Mark Sadowski: 7 (Northwestern, Purdue, Illinois, Georgia, UCLA, USC, Utah)
Sheldon White: 1 (South Alabama)
Andy Weidl: 1 (LSU)
Colbert paced the group, attending his old scouting area MAC region along with some of the bigger Pro Days down south. He also joined positional coaches as another set of eyes for smaller workouts, OL Travis Glover at Georgia State and WR Malachi Corley at Western Kentucky.
Rooney attended more Pro Days last year (again, fewer of them this year), but his slate of schools were the usual East Coast/Southeast suspects. Sadowski seems to balance between his old Chicago stomping grounds, where he’s likely built up connections, and the West Coast. White was only at one Pro Day this year, down from three a year ago, while we’ve only seen Weidl at three Pro Days the past two combined years. He seems to go in place of Tomlin/Khan when they’re occupied by the league meetings.
AREA SCOUTS/Other Personnel
Zach Crockett: 7 (South Carolina, Georgia, Clemson, Alabama, Florida State, NC State, Duke)
Kelvin Fisher: 6 (Oklahoma, Arizona State, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Missouri)
Jarrod Highberger: 5 (Virginia, Liberty, Southern Miss, Mississippi State, Ole Miss)
Dennis MacInnis: 4 (Oregon, Auburn, Mercer, Pitt)
Braunson Williams: 4 (Boston College, Georgia Southern, Mercer, Pitt)
Ike Taylor: 4 (Miami FL, Alabama, Michigan, LSU)
Phil Kreidler: 4 (Syracuse, UConn, Louisville, Pitt)
Tosin Kazeem: 4 (South Florida, Florida, Florida State, Rutgers)
Casey Weidl: 3 (Indiana, Appalachian State, Pitt)
Jim Ward: 3 (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa)
Chidi Iwuoma: 2 (Stanford, Fresno State)
Mark Bruener: 1 (Washington)
Donovan Moore: 1 (Pitt)
Chris Watts: None
Anthony Rooney: None
Fawwaz Izzuddin: None
Crockett led with seven. Compared to last year, we marked four scouts for attending at least eight, though again, there were fewer Pro Days for us to track. Still, we saw Kreidler at ten schools last year compared to just four this year. It’s a noticeable decrease, even if we missed him at one or two. You wonder if retirement is near for him.
Highberger and Ward were among new scouts this year and were busy on-scene. It’s odd we didn’t spot Chris Watts once after seeing him five times last year. However, he covered lots of the Big 12 schools (Baylor, Houston) folded into the conference-wide Pro Day. I’m going to assume he attended that session, but we never got eyes on him. Also strange to only see Bruener once this year. Usually, we spot him a bunch.
Based on previous knowledge and this year’s tracking, here’s our estimate of the regions each scout is in charge of:
Crockett: Southeast
Fisher: West/Southwest
Highberger: South/Mid-Atlantic
Ward: Midwest
Iwuoma: West
Bruener: Midwest/West
There are eight schools we are confident the Steelers didn’t send personnel to this cycle. That’s based on either the school or complete reports listing out all teams who attended that workout, with Pittsburgh excluded. They are:
Northern Illinois
Northern Iowa
Troy
Holy Cross
Eastern Kentucky
West Florida
UTEP
Boise State
That is nothing that will shake up your mock draft. It’s a little surprising that no one went to Troy, Holy Cross (which had three draftable prospects work out), or Boise State. They showed interest in UNI DT Khristian Boyd, but he was hurt and worked out this week at Iowa, so it makes sense why they didn’t attend his Pro Day. Last year, we only knew of the team skipping four Pro Days, so there was an increase here.
