During his time with the Steelers, Kevin Colbert was the architect of many great teams, capturing two Super Bowls and going to a third. Colbert had his fair share of misses, but he put together some of the greatest rosters in NFL history. With the draft finally almost here, current General Manager Omar Khan and the rest of the front office hope to add some players that match the quality Colbert would always find. In a recent interview with the Armstrong Neighborhood Channel on YouTube, Colbert broke down some of the processes that the front office would follow during his tenure with the team.
”That stuff occurred over the course of two years, especially with the underclassmen coming into the draft. You had to be prepared. Myself and the scouts, we took a good two years to gather that information. And then you get your coaches involved in that late Spring part of the evaluation. Really, you spend a good three-and-a-half weeks leading up to the draft pooling all that information together and narrowing it down so that when you get to draft day, it’s pretty much said and done what you’re going to do or what you’d like to do,” Colbert said on the process the team went through to gather information on players leading up to the draft. “If you’re in a given moment, like the Steelers are picking 20th this year, if we were picking 20th, we knew there were 20 players that are going to be available to us, in one way or another.”
Most fans, and even many analysts, don’t start thinking about the draft until after the regular season is over, but of course, an NFL front office isn’t like everybody else. Considering how many players Colbert hit on in the first round, it makes sense that their process was extensive and left no stone unturned. With the front office undergoing many significant changes since he retired, it’s uncertain whether the team still has such an in-depth process, but it would be safer to bet on that kind of tradition continuing than not. Some things had to have changed, potentially the inclusion of more analytics, considering Colbert doesn’t seem too fond of them, but the old adage of not fixing what isn’t broken seems to ring true here.
Although he drafted multiple Hall of Fame and Pro Bowl players, it seems that Colbert also has a different benchmark for what makes a successful player a good draft pick. Speaking on this later in the interview, Colbert broke down what he believes makes a draft pick a hit rather than a miss.
”It takes three years to really understand how a draft is evaluated. The only way to evaluate the draft is you have to look at your record. Not how many picks play, not how many of them turn into Pro Bowlers, but did they help you win more games than you lost? Did they help you win a championship? That’s the only thing you can measure it by,” Colbert said when asked how he determines if a draft is good or not. “Looking back on history, when you look at all the great players, most of them aren’t great players their rookie seasons, and they turned into great players as they grew and matured.”
It’s interesting to get the perspective of the man behind the curtain with the Steelers’ great drafts, especially when you apply this scope to some of the draft picks Colbert made that weren’t universally loved at the time. Terrell Edmunds is a great example, as he wasn’t projected to be taken in the first round, and he did struggle early in his career, but by the time he left, fans were clamoring for the team to re-sign him to fill the void he left at safety. He may not have been Troy Polamalu, but he helped the team get better, and by Colbert’s estimation, that equals success.
For the upcoming 2024 draft, the Steelers should be looking for exactly that. A player who can contribute to winning football. According to Colbert, this process is a long and arduous one for the entire organization, so no matter who the team selects on Thursday, fans will have to have faith that they will help the Steelers get closer to a championship, whether that’s in their rookie season or their fourth year.
