Throughout the pre-draft process, there are key points for gaining more information on draft prospects. There’s the Senior Bowl and the college All-Star games. There’s the NFL Scouting Combine where top prospects can meet with teams, do athletic testing, and get checked out medically. Then there’s the Pro Day circuit when coaches and scouts get to go to college campuses and meet with prospects on their home turf. It’s one of the biggest parts of the evaluation process for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
When head coach Mike Tomlin held his pre-draft press conference along with general manager Omar Khan on Monday, he was asked about his approach to Pro Days.
“Personally, when I’m at a Pro Day, I’m trying to get to know as many people as possible,” Tomlin said via the Steelers’ YouTube channel. “That’s why we go to some of the Pro Days that we go to, you know. We go to Georgia, we go to Alabama, we go to Michigan kind of routinely because you see a lot of prospects. Michigan had I think 18 Combine invites. And so obviously, all of those guys aren’t first rounders, man. I’m trying to gain information about any and all of those guys. But you know, that’s the mindset. We step into town, you come in prepared enough on the front end, it allows you to cast a big net and get an exposure to everyone. So the key for us in an effort not to get hyper-focused on the high-level draft picks, as you mentioned, is to go in with a certain level of preparedness.”
While events like the Senior Bowl and the Combine allow teams to meet with players who could be first overall to players who might not get drafted, Pro Days allow for a more focused look at players who could also be drafted all over the place. In the process leading up to the 2023 NFL Draft, the Steelers went to the Georgia Pro Day and ended up drafting two players from that school in OT Broderick Jones and TE Darrell Washington.
As Tomlin said, it’s easy to get hyper-focused on the first round of the draft. That’s where you want to hit home runs, to mix in a baseball metaphor. Missing on first-round picks can cause scouts, general managers, and even head coaches to lose their jobs.
However, an NFL roster is comprised of 53 players. Not all of them can be first-round picks. That means teams need to hit on later-round picks. They don’t have to be home runs (though that’s nice). If teams can hit at least singles or even doubles in the later rounds, that’s going to improve their roster significantly over time.
And Pro Days can be a way for teams to evaluate later-round prospects. The Steelers attended Georgia’s Pro Day again this year. Most people were focused on OT Amarius Mims, a popular name for the Steelers in mock drafts. However, the Steelers also have a need at center, and Sedrick Van Pran-Granger is viewed as a mid-round pick. It is entirely possible that Tomlin and the rest of the Steelers could have been evaluating him as well.
The more data a team can collect throughout the draft process, the better. Pro Days, especially big ones like Tomlin mentioned that have a lot of prospects, are a great way to get more information. It can be used for evaluating one specific player or for casting a big net on a number of players.
Tomlin did also talk about how he operates at Pro Days as a way to throw off other teams and even the media. So you can’t look at everything Tomlin does at every Pro Day as a way to determine what the Steelers are doing. However, he goes into each Pro Day as prepared as possible to know who will be there and who could help the Steelers.
