YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT
Some Steelers positions of need are well-stocked in the draft, but others have few strong prospects after the early rounds
“Pssst. Need a running back or wide receiver?” asked the gentleman standing on the street corner in a gray trench coat.
An unusual request. Usually, these guys offer watches. He opened his coat, and there they were: halfbacks and wide receivers of all shapes and sizes spilling out, tucked in pockets, pinned to the inside. First-round talent, second-round, thirdround. A cornucopia of backs and receivers.
“Got a safety or tight end?” the prospective customer asked.
“Nah, come back next year; maybe then.”
It’s that kind of draft for the NFL, which will begin mining the talent Thursday, continue Friday and finish Saturday. Many good players at one position, few at another.
“It’s an interesting draft in this sense: It’s good and deep at certain positions, and at other positions, there’s almost nobody there,” said Tom Donahoe, senior football advisor for the Philadelphia Eagles and former head personnel man for the Steelers. “That’s what’s going to make it fascinating, I think. It could be the potential in this draft for a lot of trades.”
The draft has plenty of wide receivers and running backs and depth at cornerback, if not top-tier players. If you want a quarterback, there are two, then a big dropoff. There is one safety and one tight end worth speaking highly about. Forget fullbacks, a position that virtually is disappearing from the game in college and the pros.
“It’s OK,” is how Tony Pauline of Draftinsider.net evaluated the 2015 class. “You have 15-20 players I grade as first-round picks and it really thins out at the end of the first round. You’ll see a lot of surprises late in Round 1. A lot of second-round guys you don’t project to go in the first round will go in the first round.”
There is good news and bad news for the Steelers, who draft at No. 22 in the first round and have eight total picks, including a compensatory in the sixth round.
They desperately need cornerbacks and pass rushers, also known as outside linebackers in their 3-4 defense.
“There is a pool of pass rushers,” said Tom Modrak, executive director of the BLESTO scouting combine, of which the Steelers have long belonged. “But a lot of mistakes are made at that position because everyone wants one so bad. You can take an offensive tackle who can play pretty good and you don’t have to hang your head. But if you take a pass rusher and he’s a two- or three-sack guy,” it can be disastrous.
“You better get the right guy,” Modrak warned. And the cornerbacks? “I think the cornerback class is pretty solid,” said Rob Rang, longtime analyst for NFLDraftScout.com and CBS Sports. “It kind of lacks the sure top-10 pick, but I like the depth in the second and third rounds. I think you can find a lot of players who are in vogue now — long, lanky, press corners. There are a lot of cornerbacks in this class who can come in and be relatively successful in their careers.”
The best pass rushers — linebackers in a 3-4 defense the Steelers play — will go fast, such as Dante Fowler, Bud Dupree and Vic Beasley. But some could drift down to No. 22 such as Nebraska’s Randy Gregory, who has his issues, or even Missouri’s Shane Ray. But once the top pass rushers are gone, the group looks thin.
It is just the opposite with the cornerbacks, who usually go high in the draft; not in this one. Michigan State’s Trae Waynes, seen as the best cornerback, might not go until the second half of the first round.
“If you’re in the market for a wide receiver, running back or cornerback, you have a chance,” Donahoe said.
“What worries me is some of those other positions are so thin, there may be a run on positions that have value — like pass rushers.”
This should be the first draft in three years that a running back goes in the first round, likely Todd Gurley of Georgia. Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon also could sneak into the first round. The Steelers won’t take one that high, but will be in the market for one Saturday, so the depth at that position bodes well for them.
Two other positions the Steelers could use are not as plentiful.
“The depth at safety and tight end is pretty weak,” Rang said.
Alabama’s Landon Collins is so far ahead of every other safety that he may go higher than his draft grades because of it. If anyone is in line for a safety, he is it. Every other safety carries questions. It is the same at tight end, where Maxx Williams of Minnesota is top-rated, but probably not a first-rounder.
For the second year in a row, there are many wide receivers and potential great ones such as Alabama’s Amari Cooper and West Virginia’s Kevin White. That receiver class, however, is not rated as highly overall as last year, when the Steelers were able to draft Martavis Bryant out of Clemson in the fourth round.
And if you need offensive and defensive linemen, you’re in luck, too.
“The offensive line is pretty good, even the interior positions,” Donahoe said. “Guard is deeper than it usually is.”
As usual, there could be a run on offensive linemen — especially tackles — in the first round with players such as Iowa’s Brandon Scherff and Stanford’s Andrus Peat going early, and as many as seven or eight offensive linemen gone before they hit the second round.
Donahoe also likes the defensive linemen, headed by Southern California’s Leonard Williams. A handful of those should go in the first round, as well.
It now appears that the top two picks will be quarterbacks — Jameis Winston of Florida State and Marcus Mariota of Oregon. But it’s not quite clear which team will get which quarterback yet because there has been speculation San Diego wants to trade Philip Rivers to Tennessee for that No. 2 pick and draft Mariota.
After those two, the quarterbacks fall off the table and it might be a while before a team picks one. The Steelers are not in that market.
But who the Steelers take? They have to be heavy on defense, although general manager Kevin Colbert is not about to play any of his cards.
“You never go into a draft looking for a side of the ball or a particular position,” Colbert said. “We will evaluate all the positions and see what falls to us at 22, or whether we want to make a decision to trade up or trade down.”
That about covers it all.