As sure as death and taxes, one thing the Pittsburgh Steelers could count on every year was Mike Tomlin hitting the road on the pre-draft scouting trails. For years, we monitored Tomlin and former general manager Kevin Colbert, who frequently tipped their hand about their interest through appearances and dinner meetings on the Pro Day trail.
Over the past three years, it was the new GM, Omar Khan, who hit the road with Tomlin. This made narrowing down the Steelers' top targets a cinch. After Tomlin stepped down, the expectation was that Khan—and possibly new head coach Mike McCarthy—would stay active on the Pro Day scouting trail.
But there seems to be a seismic shift in the Steelers' pre-draft approach.
Through March 16, a total of 36 college football teams have held their annual Pro Days. This includes schools with NFL prospects like USC, Clemson, Wisconsin, and Washington. Interestingly, there have been no reported Khan sightings at any of them.
The Pittsburgh Steelers' top NFL Draft targets could be harder to predict after Omar Khan's major pre-draft change
For what it's worth, the Steelers have had plenty of folks from their scouting department on the Pro Day trail. Notable names like Vice President of Player Personnel Dan Rooney Jr., Director of Player Scouting Mark Sadkowski, and Director of Pro Scouting Sheldon White have been spotted at select Pro Days so far.
But, historically, the Steelers' head coach/GM—Tomlin and/or Colbert/Khan—has been one of the best predictors of who Pittsburgh would target early in the draft. This very measure helped us predict that Najee Harris would be the team's first-round pick in 2021, Kenny Pickett in 2022, Broderick Jones in 2023, and Derrick Harmon in 2025.
However, with Khan seemingly off the scouting trail, the Steelers' top interest could be much harder to locate.
While we still have a strong sense of the team's top positional needs, we might not be able to collect as much data on the Steelers' pre-draft scouting trail as in years past. And because Khan doesn't seem to be hitting the road at this point, we may need to place more weight on 30-visits (which proved to be a predictor for the team selecting Troy Fautanu in Round 1 of the 2024 NFL Draft).
We will continue to scour X, social media, and the internet for any signs of Omar Khan on the Pro Day scouting trail. But with an apparent shift in philosophy in the post-Tomlin era, following the breadcrumbs to the Pittsburgh Steelers' favorite prospects in the 2026 NFL Draft could be much more difficult than in years past.