Best Steelers draft picks after Round 7: Who makes the cut?
By Eric Hassel
The Steelers GM apparently proposed awarding teams three additional picks
As has been reported by numerous media outlets, Kevin Colbert, the Steelers GM, proposed adding three more rounds to the upcoming 2020 NFL draft during a recent conference call with league officials. Here is an expert from said conference call:
"During a conference call, Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert, one of the NFL’s longest-tenured general managers, told league officials that teams should be awarded three extra draft picks due to the “inherent challenges posed by the coronavirus restrictions,” according to the New York Daily News. Colbert suggested the idea because he feels that teams will be more prone to making mistakes without the additional time to evaluate this year’s prospects. It’s Colbert’s belief that a 10-round draft would help widen a team’s margin for error."
While the suggestion to add what would essentially be three extra rounds to the draft is an intriguing one, it got me thinking about when the draft was more than its current format of seven rounds. When I started watching football in 1978, the NFL draft consisted of 12 rounds.
It was also not the spectacle that it has become. I remember having to read the sports section of the Sunday newspaper to find out who the Steelers had drafted. Looking back on some of those 12 round drafts, Colbert’s point about helping to widen a team’s margin for error is accentuated.
What I mean by that is this: In the current format of seven rounds, there is very little margin for error. A team has to ‘hit on’ players picked in at least the first four rounds to have any chance of having a good draft.
If the 2020 draft was extended to 10 rounds, how would the Steelers fare? Well, let’s take a look at who we have drafted in rounds 8, 9 and 10 since 1970. We will commence with round 10 for reasons that will become obvious as we press forward.