Labriola on Day 3 of NFL Draft
The picking is over. Now comes the hard part.
It’s a reality of NFL life, that the difference between those who make it big and those who become just a footnote in history are the ones who understand the difference between the beginning and the end.
As one example, making the 53-man roster coming out of a particular preseason isn’t a sign of a job well-done, but it’s rather the beginning of a more important phase than the one ending with the awarding of a roster spot. The guys who go on to fashion lucrative and decorated professional careers are those who understand that it’s what is done after making the team that is most important, that making the team is just the beginning of the hard work and not the signal of a job well done.
So it also is with the NFL Draft. Getting picked during this just-completed three-day weekend, or getting signed as a free agent after not being picked, is just the start of the journey for all of these professional hopefuls as well as for the teams pinning a portion of their futures on them.
“We’re excited about the young men we added to our roster, but also excited about the process we’ve gone through this weekend,” said Coach Mike Tomlin. “It’s the culmination of a lot of work and it’s been a very enjoyable process. I feel good about what we’ve been able to do this weekend, but it’s not the end. It’s just the beginning. Whether it’s the beginning in terms of making additional signings, or whether it’s the beginning in terms of getting these guys acclimated to Pittsburgh and getting to know them from a football perspective, we’re equally as excited about what lies ahead as we are about what happened this weekend.”
The Steelers went into the draft with eight selections over the seven rounds, and they came away with two outside linebackers, two cornerbacks, one quarterback, one running back, one wide receiver, and one long-snapper. They didn’t pick any linemen on either side of the ball, and they didn’t draft a tight end.
AN HEIR, OR A ROOM REMODELER?
Nothing gets the juices of the fan base flowing quite like drafting a quarterback, and the Steelers opened Day 3 of the 2017 NFL Draft by doing that for the first time since 2013. That was the year when the Steelers used their second pick in the fourth round – the 115th overall – on Landry Joneshttp://www.steelers.com/assets/nflim...ticle-link.gif, and today they again added a quarterback in the fourth round when they used the 135th overall selection on Joshua Dobbshttp://www.steelers.com/assets/nflim...ticle-link.gif.
“I think you are always trying to better yourselves in the room,” said quarterbacks coach Randy Fichtner, “regardless of what Ben Roethlisbergerhttp://www.steelers.com/assets/nflim...ticle-link.gif is doing, just to throw that out there. Whether (Roethlisberger) plays five more years, six more years, I tease him all the time saying we have to go eight (more). That’s irrelevant. It’s a matter of strengthening the (quarterback) room, finding some characteristics that he can bring to the Steelers that we value to make us better. I think our room just gets competitive. That’s always a good thing. You are looking for competition, and it just happens that it fell at quarterback this year.”
Dobbs (6-foot-3, 216 pounds) literally comes to the Steelers as a rocket scientist. He is on track to graduate in a few weeks with a degree in aerospace engineering, with a minor is business, and in a recent interview with Peter King, he said, “My senior year I was taking astronautics, propulsion, and an aerodynamics class . . . all on the same day. At the same time as football season when I was leading an SEC team. I think I can handle it.”..........
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