Pittsburgh’s Scouting Staff Isn’t Just Changing. It’s Growing.

You don’t have to tell me twice to talk about the Pittsburgh Steelers scouting staff. Monday’s changes signified another overhaul of the front office and scouting department, one that looks much more like Omar Khan’s group and far less like Kevin Colbert’s. While the names are much different, there’s also just a lot more of them.

Due to the team’s recent slew of hires, Pittsburgh currently has 21 members of the front office/scouting department. This excludes Khan himself, non-scouting roles like those who handle the salary cap, and Administrative Assistants. It does include football analysts the team has employed over the years.

This group of 21 men is the most I’ve tracked since 2017, when I began annually tracking the scouting department. Here are some of the data points from over the years. This isn’t every single mark I’ve noted, but it offers a good spread throughout the years.

It’s important to note under Colbert, the group generally grew bigger but at a slow pace. Under Khan, it’s jumped up quickly.

As we’ve examined and discussed with our annual coaching staff review (the 2024 edition will be written later this month), a big or small scouting staff isn’t inherently good or bad. There are pros and cons. A larger group of scouts allows you to cover more ground, potentially work more quickly, and bring more ideas into the room. But it also could put “too many cooks” in the situation with a greater risk of disorganization and miscommunication along with potential weaker scouts in the room. It’s hard to find a room full of 20 stars.

But the commentary here isn’t about the effectiveness or value of Khan’s changes. It’s merely to point out the difference. Pittsburgh used to have a smaller scouting staff full of names who had been around forever, some of them decades. Now, most of this group has been hired since 2022, and it’s probably the largest scouting department the Steelers have ever fielded.