The Pittsburgh Steelers promoted Omar Khan to general manager in 2023, and he has slowly made this his roster. After two widely praised drafts and some shrewd additions here and there, he already has a strong reputation. But that is partly because he is putting into practice a plan that has deep roots, so to speak. He watched Kevin Colbert put this roster together year after year, and now he is implementing his own vision.
“Omar [Khan] is aggressive. He’s not trying to stand still”, Steelers president Art Rooney II told Pat Kirwan and Jim Miller on Friday on SiriusXM’s Movin’ the Chains. Continuing, Rooney added, “He’s hungry. He’s as hungry as the rest of us. When he got this job, he was determined to start making a difference. I like what we’ve done so far, and we’ll see what the results are”.
While describing a new general manager as “determined to start making a difference” isn’t exactly revelatory, the Steelers’ situation is different than most. You don’t see many successions like Kevin Colbert to Omar Khan, short of Baltimore’s transition to Eric DeCosta.
Khan was Colbert’s right-hand man in many ways for decades and saw up close how he ran things. Now that he is the one running the show, he is surely working from a template that he has contemplated for a long time. He is not doing it on his own, of course, the Steelers hiring Andy Weidl as his assistant. But he is rightfully receiving the attention for the building blocks of this roster, hopefully setting themselves up for a successful era in Pittsburgh.
While Khan has especially garnered praise in the draft, he has certainly presided over some other major moves. The decision to pursue Russell Wilson this offseason was a huge one, as was the subsequent Kenny Pickett trade. You can also point to the trade of Diontae Johnson, getting Donte Jackson in return. Those moves will go a long way toward defining, at the very least, the 2024 season, perhaps beyond.
One obvious priority has been the trenches. In his first offseason as general manager, the Steelers signed Isaac Seumalo and Nate Herbig in free agency and traded up in the first round to draft Broderick Jones. Under Khan in 2024, they drafted three linemen in the first four rounds, of whom Troy Fautanu and Zach Frazier should start as rookies in the first two rounds. Fourth-round Mason McCormick could possibly start by next season.
Of course, all a general manager can do is put a roster together; it’s up to the coaches and players to put together the team and win the games on the field. Omar Khan is already starting to build a fine reputation for himself, but he knows the measuring stick. Especially in Pittsburgh, it’s about winning in the playoffs.
If his rosters don’t retrieve the hardware, then he hasn’t done his job. Khan has been inside the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex long enough to know that intimately.
