Though Kevin Colbert isn’t in the captain’s chair for tonight’s NFL draft, it’s interesting to hear about his and the team’s process for over 20 draft classes. And how things have changed, at least a little, under current GM Omar Khan. Appearing on 102.5 DVE Thursday morning, former Pittsburgh Steelers scout Mark Gorscak described how the team ultimately chose its player.
Gorscak said Colbert, using a model from mentor Ron Hughes, created a scale to virtually guarantee no two players would have the exact same grade.
“Omar’s scale is a little bit different than Kevin’s scale,” Gorscak told Randy Baumann and his morning show crew. “Everyone’s scale is a little bit different in the whole league. But our scale was such that it went from tens to hundreds to even thousands. So that we could have, we didn’t want to have two players with the same grade. We had to go ahead and distinguish between them, even if they were two different positions.”
The show joked that that scale must’ve meant a prospect might get a grade of “7.85321” but Gorscak calmly replied that sometimes the grades got that granular. All in an effort to create separation between two prospects and have the Steelers truly pick the player with the top grade. Though Gorscak made clear that if two players had close grades, need would win out. While Pittsburgh has often professed “best player available,” there’s no question the Steelers operated closer to a model of where need and talent met at their highest point.
“If we have two players that are close and say the ‘best player’ ranks ahead of the ‘need’ player, but it’s percentage points of hundreds. Well, it’s okay. Take a need,” Gorscak said.
Need figures to be addressed tonight under Khan as the Steelers are likely to target offensive line in the first round, though predicting if the pick will come at offensive tackle or center is trickier work. Each team’s draft board is different, but Gorscak indicated the Steelers’ was set up vertically and horizontally in overall grade and by position.
Gorscak also noted the Steelers did their own mock draft though as Kevin Colbert once said, they eventually stopped doing it with the other 31 teams, fruitlessly trying to predict what they would do. Instead, the team looked at its board, took out all the quarterbacks (when the Steelers had Ben Roethlisberger in his prime) and ranked the best players. Whoever the top name was when the Steelers came on the clock, or a “need” if two grades were very close, became the pick.
“So who would we pick with the first pick? We’re on a clock. Second pick, who will we pick? We would go down to probably pick, 45, 46. So everything was in line,” Gorscak said. “We knew when we were picking when it was our turn, what player we would pick that was left outta that top 45. And we would probably get our first three picks off of that.”
That’s essentially the “notecard” theory Dave Bryan has discussed for years. The Steelers had their relatively small list of guys, the ones they liked and targeted, and didn’t need to stray from that board. That’s where the bulk of their draft class came from. And while Colbert’s results near the end of his tenure can be debated, overall, he and the Steelers were excellent drafters who rarely struck out.
Tonight, neither Mark Gorscak nor Kevin Colbert will be in the Steelers’ Bill Nunn draft room. Colbert stepped down after 2022, Gorscak after 2023. But Gorscak remains close to football, still in charge of the 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine (and Big 12 Pro Day) while working for the Senior Bowl throughout the fall and winter. Khan may be doing things a bit differently these days, but his goal will be the same. Find the next great Steelers player.
