To trade or not to trade: above the Steelers

This series of posts will look at the draft foes near the Ravens in the draft order, focusing on their drafting tendencies and whether we should trade up above them or back behind them

The first post of this series has to start with our arch rivals on the field as well in the front office – the Pittsburgh Steelers. Each year when the draft rolls around, I find the Steelers quite frustrating, they have a habit of picking up players I’m high on – Alex Highsmith was the guy last year I wanted for the Ravens that they picked up. I suspect the Ravens may feel the same, especially given our similar philosophy on the field. So there must be a consideration in almost every round, if the possibility presents itself, to trade up above them to grab our guy.

But is that fool’s gold? Is there actually a more limited possibility of the Steelers taking a player we covet? To understand this we need to understand the Steelers tendencies when drafting by looking at their history, are there any clues that might tell us who they would be targeting themselves?

I’ve firmly believed for a while now that the current practice of mock drafts across the industry could be much more scientific. Simply pulling up a team’s needs and plucking a name that fits from the consensus rankings seems a bit too random. Of course, each draft evolves differently and scenarios play out that send ripples through the rounds sending most mocks off course quickly but more research and insight could be applied.

Having studied other team’s draft histories, I have noticed that patterns start to emerge that betray a little, what types of players different teams are looking for and what they are want to do on draft night. In the same way that teams study play-calling tendencies before a game, we can begin to evaluate team’s drafting tendencies when considering whether to trade up and above them or to play out scenarios on who might be there from our board when we pick. We’ve heard that DeCosta is good at predicting the pick of teams, even in later rounds so he must do some of this evaluation himself to add to his network of information from across the league.

To do this though, we need a constant in the other team, a person or a philosophy that has been around guiding or making decisions over the course of a number of years. There was a recent leak of the Cleveland Browns “guardrails” under Paul dePodesta, a roadmap for making decisions – tendencies can emerge because of these guardrails betraying organisational philosophy through who they select in the draft as well as the personal preferences of the main decision maker who may consistently pick one type of player above another, when faced with a cluster of similarly rated players on their board.

With the Steelers we can do this because of one of the more inconspicuous General Managers in the NFL; Kevin Colbert. Colbert was appointed the Steelers first ever GM in August 2011 and had been running the Steelers draft since 2000. He has always kept a low profile, even running backs coach Kirby Wilson had a longer profile than Colbert in the Steelers 2012 media guide. His success pre-2012 included a plethora of first round hits like Troy Polamalu, Ben Roethlisberger, Maurkice Pouncey and Cam Heyward as well as annoyingly good role players that stuck around for years like Casey Hampton, Heath Miller and Lawrence Timmons. For this analysis though, I will focus on his draft history since his appointment as GM, the 2012 draft and beyond.

It’s important to note here that when studying tendencies we have to use empirical evidence – we cannot use what we thought about a player and apply a value judgment to it. Teams within the league evaluate players very differently let alone how different that evaluation must be from an amateur analyst like me or even the consensus in the draft media. So when studying these tendencies its important to look at two things.

1. Athletic profile – as established in testing at the combine, with pro day testing only when combine testing isn’t available

2. College production – that hopefully might betray a type of player that is targeted based off the statistical production they collect

You might think this gives a limited data-set and won’t tell much about a team’s drafting tendencies, but you’d be surprised at what we can learn even from this limited information.

Without even looking deep into the data we can immediately establish some tendencies which can surely no longer be a coincidence. The Steelers didn’t have a 1st round pick last year but in the previous seven drafts, their first round pick has either been a linebacker, three of the five linebackers were edge defenders in their scheme, or a defensive back. David DeCastro was the last offensive player drafted in the first round. If you go back before 2012, you can see all kinds of different positions drafted but I would argue that Colbert has started to become more rigid in the positions he targets in different rounds.

If you dive into the athletic profile of these first round picks, another obvious tendency emerges, these first round picks must be athletically gifted. It’s important to note here that I don’t think the Steelers or Colbert have any athletic red lines that they adhere to dogmatically, every corner does not have to run a 4.5 or better for them to draft them, and this athleticism, from what I can see from the names, showed up on tape. So for me, it is likely that they see speed and explosion in their play but in terms of evidence of this, we can see it in their testing and realise the type of player they are looking for in the first round.

And it is speed or explosion they are interested in from their defensive first round picks. Artie Burns and Terrell Edmunds were amongst the fastest DBs tested in their respective years. Devin Bush and Ryan Shazier were both two of the fastest and most explosive inside linebackers tested in the past decade at the combine. They both ran a sub 4.5 40-yard dash at some point in the pre-draft evaluation process (Shazier’s at his pro day) and they both had a vertical jump in excess of 40 inches. Even two of the edge defenders selected; TJ Watt and Bud Dupree had some sort of impressive athletic data-point. Dupree did light up the combine, scoring at the top of his position group in most tests while TJ Watt showed explosion, close to the head of his peers in the broad, vertical jumps and his 10 yard split in the 40 yard dash. As I said, much of this will likely not be down to the Steelers targeting the most athletic players through testing alone but it’s likely that to qualify to be a Steelers first round pick, you need speed or explosion and they want to see it verified through your athletic testing. Even David DeCastro impressed for his size in the shuttle testing, the bench press and with his ten yard split.

If we zoom back out again though, we can see another tendency emerge. Eric DeCosta, when appointed, was asked about the Ravens history drafting receivers. He hypothesised that the way to solving the problem was to take more swings at it; that the Ravens had not drafted enough wide receivers with enough regularity over the years. Looking at the Steelers draft history, its hard to imagine he wasn’t speaking in direct reference to our rivals.

The Steelers appear to find value at the receiver position, it feels like every year. But that is not the case, as I’m sure Steelers fans would tell you. To get to Juju, Claypool and Diontae Johnson, they had to go through Sammie Coates, Dri Archer and Markus Wheaton. So while the myth of the Steelers’ recently drafted receiver always panning out is exactly that, what is true is that they are not perturbed by their failures at the position and have consistently invested high draft capital in receivers over the years. Since 2013 they have invested a day two pick in a receiver seven out of eight times. With Juju likely moving on, I would not bet against them doing so again.

What’s really interesting though, is that they have made a visible adjustment to their philosophy about receivers and have moved away from speed being essential to them. It appears you do have to have enough speed to get by but those of us familiar with previous years of the pre-draft evaluation process will recognise names like Coates and Archer as workout warriors. Claypool was very athletically gifted for his size but other more recent picks like Johnson, Smith-Schuster and James Washington came in around the middle of the pack with their testing.

At first glance there isn’t much if anything, remarkable about their statistical production at the college level aside from perhaps liking receivers who attract a high volume of targets (many over 100 in a season) and players who have started over multiple years – but this is true of most of their picks actually. They don’t appear to place a premium on yards after the catch and most of the other numbers show no discernible pattern at all. Except, there were a number of cases where production in their final year in college was significantly down on one of their previous years, usually not because of injury. Dri Archer, Diontae Johnson, Juju Smith-Schuster and Sammie Coates all had down years immediately preceding their entry into the draft and had been statistically more productive in their earlier years in college. Leading me to wonder whether Colbert targets these high volume, high production receivers who made less of a splash just before their draft year and therefore dropped slightly, Colbert nabbing them at a position of value, most often in the third round. This rule does also appear to extend to other positions with the likes of Anthony McFarland and Devin Bush also having statistically down years for them, before they entered the draft.

One of the other reasons for focusing on the Steelers for this piece is that they have similar needs to us along the offensive line, at outside linebacker and tight end. The Ravens will arguably be targeting an offensive lineman early in this year’s draft either to replace an eventually departed Orlando Brown, or to shore up the interior. Would we need to get above the Steelers in the early rounds to take an offensive lineman and snipe the Steelers? Probably not when you look at the tendencies. Of their 28 day 1 and day 2 picks since 2012, only three have been spent on offensive linemen. There isn’t much of a clue as to what flavour of offensive lineman they like, mainly because the sample size is nowhere big enough but also because no even remotely distinct pattern emerges.

The tendencies talked about above are the most noteworthy but I wanted to include some other more tenuous possible patterns from the data:

• Defensive Back – mostly targeted in the mid rounds, it looks like the Steelers like speed and/or explosion not just in their first round picks but in most of their defensive backs in the top 150. Where possible they also love these guys to have ball skills – often with multiple interceptions across multiple years or at least get their hands on the ball with pass breakups.

• Defensive Line – pretty much the only pre-requisite is being big – all their drafted down linemen were over 300 pounds, not surprising for their scheme but there were no projections in there. You’re either an uber-athletic sub-250lb edge player who coverts to outside linebacker in the Steelers scheme or you’re a 300-pound plus heavyweight. They’ve taken a comparatively high number of shots at defensive line over the years almost always taking one or two defensive line players. They’re also liable to take a shot at a massive nose at some point.

• Quarterback – not much of a sample size here and I’m sure they won’t be in position to take one of the top guys, but of the three that have been taken in the years analysed, Landry Jones, Josh Dobbs and Mason Rudolph, all were multiple year starters at big schools. All had over 60% completion percentage. All had a significant volume of passing yards and they didn’t seem to care too much about mistakes, with all having comparatively high interception numbers. Can’t really take too much from a sample size of three though.

• Running Back – they don’t seem to mind undersized but productive backs who might have been part of timeshares in college. They also like backs who have proven that they can be a dual threat and have some kind of decent production as receivers.

To summarise the overall feel I get from analysing Kevin Colbert’s draft history…

I think he likes to eliminate potential risk factors as much as possible in early picks – placing a premium on athleticism and some elements of production.

I think he likes to hammer some positions every draft while neglecting others, accumulating a number of swings at receiver, defensive line, defensive back and all across their linebacking corps.

I think he finds specific value where he can, for example players who underperformed the year before they entered the draft/never hitting certain over-valued positions in the first round.

I think he likes an athletic linebacker (edge guys included) or defensive back in round one and a high volume, value pick at wide receiver on day 2.

And finally, I think he is generally a guy who runs a room that is focused on film and what the prospects in question have put on tape, as it was comparatively hard to find tendencies from the Steelers’ draft history.

If we are to follow the tendencies and if you forced me to guess without knowing how the draft would evolve (i.e. I would expect to have a higher hit rate a few picks out from the Steelers picks on draft night) I expect to see the following as potential future Steelers:

Possible Day 1 picks: EDGE Azeez Ojulari, LB Zaven Collins

Possible Day 2 picks: WR Rondale Moore, RB Michael Carter, S Talanoa Hufanga, LB Chaz Surratt

Possible Day 3 picks: QB Sam Ehlinger, CB Shakur Brown, CB Kelvin Joseph, S Divine Deablo, DT Tedarrell Slaton