The Pittsburgh Steelers selected Washington OT Troy Fautanu in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft, ending the team’s “Blue’s Clues” Pro Day streak where one of the head coach or general manager attended the Pro Day workout of the player Pittsburgh selected in the first round. Mike Tomlin and Omar Khan made four Pro Day trips this year, hitting Georgia, Michigan, Clemson and Alabama. While neither Tomlin nor Khan saw Fautanu work out in Washington, the trip to Tuscaloosa for Alabama’s Pro Day allowed them to meet people who know and worked with Fautanu, as Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer took over as the head coach at Alabama this offseason.
Other staffers, including Alabama OC Nick Sheridan, were on staff at Washington last season, and Tomlin said that the trip to Alabama helped them gather more info on Fautanu.
“We went to Tuscaloosa, obviously to handle some Alabama business, but we had an opportunity to really talk to some people in Tuscaloosa that really had some first-hand knowledge of his capabilities, the coaching staff. And he just checked every box,” Tomlin said Thursday night in his press conference after the pick.
Pat Meyer was in attendance at Washington’s Pro Day, but it is interesting that Tomlin and Khan were able to gather information on Fautanu and potentially other Washington prospects while at Alabama’s Pro Day. DeBoer was the coach at Washington for the last two years, so he knows the prospects coming out of the school better than current head coach Jedd Fisch, who came over from Arizona this offseason. Obviously, the Steelers didn’t get a chance to talk with Fautanu at his Pro Day, and at Alabama it’s not as if the entire focus was on learning about Fautanu, as they took a trio of Alabama prospects out to dinner, but it surely helped the Steelers in the information-gathering process.
While it’s the first time since 2009 that neither Tomlin nor Khan or Kevin Colbert attended the first-round pick’s Pro Day, it’s also the first time since 2012 when the Steelers selected David DeCastro that they went to the West Coast for their first-round pick. Similar to DeCastro, it came with a player who was highly regarded and fell due to the board breaking a certain way. Also, it’s not as if the Steelers didn’t do their due diligence on Fautanu, as he was a pre-draft visitor and someone the team met with at the NFL Scouting Combine. So despite the Blue’s Clues not being followed this year, it wasn’t that much of a break in tradition, especially considering the trip to Alabama.
The trip to Alabama feels like it should be at least half-credit, and it’s not enough to signal a change in philosophy just yet, but it is certainly notable that Pittsburgh was reportedly considering taking Tyler Guyton or Graham Barton if it didn’t take Fautanu. We don’t have Tomlin or Khan down as attending the Big 12 Pro Day for Guyton and we know Arthur Smith attended the Duke Pro Day and saw Barton.
In the end, the Steelers got a top player at a position of need. Tomlin, Khan and the rest of the organization certainly seem comfortable with the selection, and leaning on the trip to Alabama to gather some information shows just how detailed the staff can be when it comes to scouting prospects.
