NFL scouts begin scouting players when they step onto college campuses but primarily focus on draft-eligible prospects. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the extra year eligibility players gained, some draft-eligible prospects choose to stay an extra year in school, giving scouts more information on prospects than ever. This year’s draft is the last year of the COVID-19 extra season, and Pittsburgh Steelers director of college scouting Dan Colbert recently sat down with Rob King for the Steelers YouTube page and explained the unique benefit the team has this year.
“I’ll say the thing that’s unique about this class is it’s kind of the culmination of all the COVID eligibility rules,” said Colbert. “So last year, I think we graded 600 players that ended up going back to school. So we had a really great head start on this year’s draft class.”
The Steelers are no strangers to selecting players who have used the extra year of eligibility. Most notably, former Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett utilized his COVID year to boost his draft stock and become a first-round pick. Some may argue that the extra year of eligibility can inflate numbers and lead to over-drafting. Still, the counterargument (and one that Colbert would probably make) is that scouts have the opportunity to evaluate more players.
Since scouts evaluated so many players for the 2024 draft, some of whom ended up returning for the 2024 college football season, it likely allowed scouts to focus on players this season that they otherwise may not have. Obviously, scouts still have to keep tabs on the 600 players they already scouted in case of a jump in productivity and talent or a decline, but overall, the scouting team doesn’t have to focus on them as much.
This could lead to teams drafting more players from smaller schools, similar to Mason McCormick last year. McCormick used his COVID-19 extra year of eligibility but without it and the accumulation of the COVID years in the previous three seasons, who knows if the Steelers are able to scout him much? McCormick went to South Dakota State. While the Jackrabbits are an FCS powerhouse, it is not guaranteed that an older McCormick would have been on Pittsburgh’s radar if they didn’t have much scouting done for the 2024 class back in 2023. Even if they did, the Steelers likely wouldn’t have had the same amount of time to really scout McCormick in-depth.
As Colbert explained, this is the last year with NFL Draft-eligible players who had an extra year of eligibility. Hopefully, the Steelers can utilize their extra year of scouting and potential larger draft board to select players who can be long-term contributors for the team as they look to return to competing for Super Bowls.
