Why looking for red flags will help Steelers avoid mistakes of the past
By Tommy Jaggi
The Pittsburgh Steelers have busted on their share of high draft picks over the past decade. Here’s how they can avoid that mistake in the future.
The Pittsburgh Steelers have been one of the NFL’s most winning teams over the past decade and beyond. They have an ownership that isn’t afraid to spend money and a head coach that offers stability to the team. When it comes to the NFL Draft, you can argue that the Steelers have been one of the best teams in the league under the direction of Kevin Colbert and Mike Tomlin. However, Pittsburgh isn’t without their fair share of misses either.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve taken a deeper dive into their draft history and uncovered that the players they busted on had more ‘red flags’ than you might remember. In this piece, I give a detailed breakdown of where the Steelers have gone wrong in the draft, and what red flags they need to avoid moving forward.
We will start this journey towards the beginning of Mike Tomlin’s career in Pittsburgh:
WR Limas Sweed
2nd round, 2008
Red flags:
- Poor college production
- Limited Combine testing
- Small market share at Texas
- Wrist injury
Though Limas Sweed was an enticing player at 6’4” with 4.48 speed, there were several red flags the Steelers should have picked up on. For starters, his college production was poor. Through 7 games as a senior, Sweed caught just 19 balls for 306 yards and 3 touchdowns and never had more than 801 receiving yards in a year despite playing 44 games in college.
Sweed didn’t own a large share of the targets at Texas and his nagging wrist injury was more than concerning. He had extreme difficulty catching the ball in the NFL. In addition, Sweed did very limited athletic testing (just the 40-yard dash and vertical). These factors combined should have dropped him lower than the second round.