The Pittsburgh Steelers’ streak ends. For the first time since 2009, their first-round pick did not have Mike Tomlin and/or the Steelers’ general manager attend their Pro Day workout. That comes after the team selected Washington OL Troy Fautanu 20th overall in the 2024 NFL Draft Thursday night.
Fautanu was brought in for a pre-draft visit, substituting for the team’s Pro Day workout. Attending his Huskies workout was offensive line coach Pat Meyer. It certainly doesn’t detract from the pick but we’ve paid close attention to the streak. Now, it’s over.
If there was a year for the streak to end, it was 2024. Tomlin and GM Omar Khan only made four Pro Day trips this cycle, attending Michigan, Alabama, Clemson, and Georgia. It was by far their fewest since we started tracking things since 2017. Usually, they attend seven, eight, and even a double-digit number of schools. It’s unclear why the two were more limited on the trail this year. Perhaps the NFL owners meetings schedules proved to meddlesome while the Big 12 conference Pro Day also limited the number of individual schools on the circuit, though it doesn’t appear Tomlin, Khan, or many NFL executives attended the event.
Now broken, the Steelers’ streak had dated back to 2010 with Florida C Maurkice Pouncey. Which is so long ago Pouncey played a full career, retired, and is now just a few years away from being Hall of Fame eligible. The last exception to that was Missouri DE Ziggy Hood in 2009. A first round miss by the organization, Hood was miscast in the Steelers’ 3-4 scheme. Though he played five years with the team, he wasn’t the right pick. Pittsburgh’s shifted course since then. Even in years where unexpected players fell into their laps, like Stanford OG David DeCastro in 2012, GM Kevin Colbert was at that Pro Day, making the long trip out west to watch him work. DeCastro became a stud right guard for the Steelers, their due diligence paying off.
It’s an example of the Steelers’ draft model and “Blue’s Clues” changing under Khan, now in his second draft with the team as GM. The streak held true in his first draft, the Steelers taking Georgia OT Broderick Jones last season, but it ends tonight.
