Who Picks the Players on Draft Day?

[Shoes]

Anyone know who decides what players get on the Steelers draft board. I mean, do they hash it out and take a vote or do Rooney, Colbert, and Tomlin flip a coin? Would be interesting to know how they really go about it.

[86WARD]

I’d imagine it’s a collaborative effort amongst the coaches and scouts with Colbert having ultimate say...

[BlackAndGold]

As 86Ward posted. Everyone has a say, but Colbert makes the final decision. (Tomlin of course is #2)

how they build their board is complete team work I'll assume.

[EzraTank]

I think they just read here and make a pick based on our expert knowledge. :)

[steelreserve]

I think they just read here and make a pick based on our expert knowledge. :)

Well if they did that, they probably wouldn't have taken Burns, Dupree or Sean Davis ... fans aren't doing that bad, it seems.

[BlackAndGold]

Well if they did that, they probably wouldn't have taken Burns, Dupree or Sean Davis ... fans aren't doing that bad, it seems.

Burns was a mistake but every fans would have selected Dupree, he was expected to go top 15.

Davis hasn't been bad...but you're just being picky when it comes to 2 round picks.

[86WARD]

Well if they did that, they probably wouldn't have taken Burns, Dupree or Sean Davis ... fans aren't doing that bad, it seems.

They certainly wouldnt have taken Rashard Mendenhall and Bruce Davis. It would’ve been Mike Jenkins/Brandon Flowers, Limas Sweed and Cliff Avril...

[teegre]

Well if they did that, they probably wouldn't have taken Burns, Dupree or Sean Davis ... fans aren't doing that bad, it seems.

Several here were high on Sean Davis. Several mock drafts that people created had him listed in R2.

[steelreserve]

Burns was a mistake but every fans would have selected Dupree, he was expected to go top 15.

Davis hasn't been bad...but you're just being picky when it comes to 2 round picks.

IIRC many fans including myself were PISSED when we took Dupree over positions of more need ... Landon Collins was one who a lot of folks were high on, and was still on the board, along with various CB prospects who were beimg debated as reaches or not, but I think mostly turned out to be ok.

"WTF - not even the best OLB prospect on the board" I believe were my exact words when we took him with Ray still available. I guess that one's open to interpretation, but the fans certainly wouldn't have done any worse.

Come to think of it, I found out about the Dupree pick while filling up my car at the same gas station where I was when I found out about the Artie Burns pick, and the AB trade apparently happened while I was on my way home from that gas station. I've got to stop buying gas there before someone gets killed.

[Fire Goodell]

Well if they did that, they probably wouldn't have taken Burns, Dupree or Sean Davis ... fans aren't doing that bad, it seems.

Nobody would have picked Juju!

[teegre]

"WTF - not even the best OLB prospect on the board" I believe were my exact words when we took him with Ray still available. I guess that one's open to interpretation, but the fans certainly wouldn't have done any worse.


Shane Ray is awful. I’d take Dupree 10 times out of 10.

Tomlin tried to trade up for Landon Collins, but the Landry Jones trade up (from the year prior) took away the trade collateral that we needed in order to acquire Collins.

[Fire Goodell]

The Pen15 club.

[steelreserve]

Several here were high on Sean Davis. Several mock drafts that people created had him listed in R2.

...

Shane Ray is awful. I’d take Dupree 10 times out of 10.

Tomlin tried to trade up for Landon Collins, but the Landry Jones trade up (from the year prior) took away the trade collateral that we needed in order to acquire Collins.


Collins went 10 picks after Dupree. Are you sure you weren't thinking of Marcus Peters?

Anyway, there was also a lot of speculation that year about guys like Eric Rowe, Byron Jones, Ron Darby, Jalen Collins (good thing we dodged that one) .. IIRC the rub was that there were like 6 or 7 CB prospects worth mentioning, but most were a slight reach for the first round ... spent a lot of time arguing over whether a serviceable player at a position of need was "worth" spending a low R1 pick on a mid R2 graded talent to be certain you secured the one you want ... I was like, hell yeah it is, because everyone else is going to take those players if you don't, and splitting hairs over pre-draft grades that are ballpark estimates at best is a good way to outsmart yourself ... what did we do, drafted a bust in R1, got the one CB out of that bunch who never played a single game, and 4 or 5 of the others turned out to be fine. I'd say the fans get that one hands-down.

I haven't really followed Ray the last couple years; I know he's no peach, but has like 2/3 the stats of Dupree in half the playing time. I'd say they're both garbage and I wouldn't want either one on my team. Certainly not for a R1 draft pick. Anyway, we're still talking about a pick where the main argument against Dupree was that we were better off with one of the DBs - Ray was pretty much an afterthought. Like, "if you're going to fuck up, at least fuck up by drafting a guy who doesn't get beat out by other players at the same position, and if you're going to roll the dice, at least roll the dice on a position we need." I didn't think OLB was a smart choice that year, is the bottom line, and obviously still don't.

The Burns pick was just such a shitfuck - I mean, same thing, multiple better players at the same position; somehow BOTH Alabama DTs who were going mid-R1 according to some were available, when DT was a huge need (glad we dodged Billings though); had our pick of several wild-card talents like Nkemdiche and Su'a Cravens and Myles Jack; actual legit, GOOD trade offers from teams that wanted to move up for Paxton Lynch ... just what an exciting pick that was to have. I don't know if I've ever seen one of our late R1 picks play out with so many big-time possibilities open - and what do we do, we choose the one that was a wet fart.

And immediately clear it was that way, too. "But come on guys, what if he turns out to be good, you don't know yet!" a few people were trying to say to calm the rest of us who were breaking beer bottles and kicking over garbage cans. Come on, you can't cover that up. That's like talking to the hot girl at the office, and you cut that same wet fart, and you're standing there clenching your butt cheeks trying to explain to her that it's just the creaky floorboards, and just when you think she might buy it, a nugget of poop rolls down your pant leg and across the floor and hits her in the shoe, and you pray to god she didn't see where it went, but she sees you looking down and takes a startled half-step back, and steps on it and smears it into the carpet, removing any doubt. Nope, you weren't going to get away with that one, The Force was there to make sure you learned your lesson, and now for years every time someone walks past that stain, everyone will remember that time Steve shit his pants on the floor, and you hope someday they'll replace the carpet, but they don't do it for years. Fans 2, Front Office 0.

Davis ... well, I wasn't high on him because I barely knew anything about him. I barely knew anything about him because it didn't seem like he did anything worth knowing about. Souting reports, scouting reports ... "Played safety but struggled as a safety ... played cornerback but stuggled in coverage ... plan is to draft him and move him back to safety where for some reason we think he won't struggle at the NFL level ... ok, sounds good, but enough joking around, who's our real #2 pick ... oh. I see."

I guess call it being right, or at least halfway right, for all the wrong reasons, but I can't say we knocked it out of the park with that pick. So call it a draw I guess. Fuckin' A. Wish we could do those picks over.

Hell, we probably could have done the entire 2015 and 2016 drafts better by having a dog pick players at random. I used to say the 2008-09 drafts were a big part of what kept us from making another run at the Super Bowl for several years ... well, those two were just as bad. Let that sink in. And we're still not done feeling the effects of them. Ouch. I really need to drink a 40 oz. now.

[86WARD]

Come to think of it, I found out about the Dupree pick while filling up my car at the same gas station where I was when I found out about the Artie Burns pick, and the AB trade apparently happened while I was on my way home from that gas station. I've got to stop buying gas there before someone gets killed.

If true...you gotta find a new gas station bro. Do it for the team...lol

[teegre]

@steelreserve

COLLINS:
On Day 2 of the draft, several teams were trying to get up to the 33rd pick. Aditi (from NFL Network) reported that Mike Tomlin wanted Landon Collins (who they had thought about taking in R1). Alas, the Steelers didn’t have as good of a trade offer as the Giants did. Hindsight being 20/20, trading the R2-R4 picks would have been worth it.

DUPREE:
I was on record as wanting Marcus Peters in R1 (and Danielle Hunter in R2). Peters went like three picks before we drafted, and many of us wanted to trade up. Adding salt to the wound, by drafting Dupree, that meant that Hunter simply was not going to get drafted in R2.

BURNS:
I was a fan of Artie Burns... although, admittedly, I was emotionally swayed by his backstory (mom & dad out of the picture, and a 20-year-old left to care for his teenage brothers). That said, I wanted Karl Joseph in R1, and to trade up to 40 in order to to acquire Burns. When Joseph got drafted, I figured they’d go Keanu Neal or Vonn Bell, but when they drafted Burns, I wasn’t as shocked as some. I was wrong, but not shocked.

GAS STATIONS:
Buy a Tesla. :no:

[steelreserve]

Nah man, for the Dupree / Collins thing, I thought the play was to take Collins or one of the Round 2 CBs straight-up over Dupree, who was a dumb gamble on a "raw talent, needs coaching" player at a position we didn't really need that badly. (Edge rusher was a red herring and playing a 3-4 with no NT was the real problem with the pass rush http://www.steelersuniverse.com/forums/showthread.php/22825-Who-s-left-for-pick-56?p=484022&viewfull=1#post484022) Take a DB first, reach or not, then use the R2 pick on whatever playmaker we thought was available.

In hindsight, I guess that R2 pick was probably going to be dogshit 9 out of 10 times no matter how you cut it, just based on who was still available and what we were looking for. Which is why I didn't count Senquez Golson as a win for the fans over the front office. Actually, just kidding, I didn't count it because I just flat-out forgot that guy existed. Another case where even the dog wins over the football pros. Like, literally, even if we told a dog to make our draft pick, and instead it went over and ate a pile of dogshit and we missed our pick until 45 minutes later, the result would've been better than that.

I usually am pretty quick to dump on the "trade back out of R1" crowd, but 2015 is a case where that actually could've worked and still gotten us our DB plus another player. But since that player probably would've sucked anyway, not worth arguing over much. But if that's what it took to get a DB who didn't suck, it would've been worth it.

As for Burns, well, you read all my thoughts on that already. At the time I was pretty pissed, another one of those "if you're going to take a guy, at least take a guy who's not the 3rd or 4th-best available at the same position." http://www.steelersuniverse.com/forums/showthread.php/25663-Ron-Cook-Steelers-a-bit-too-quick-to-praise-draft-pick-Burns?p=550031&viewfull=1#post550031