If you just think two picks were good picks, that would seem to put the draft grade to at least a D-. I would think an F would be reserved for a draft where all picks were bad.

I love it.

All our prospects suck, draft picks cannot possibly succeed. The steelers have serious holes, will be awful this year. Keep pouring it on you small-pricked pundits, give the steelers more incentive.

This is going to be funny in two years. You never learn. Colbert is smarter than you. That said, the steelers suck, won’t even win division, not even 8-8. No picks will make the team. Tomlin is a lousy coach. Lebeau is an idiot.

Am I wrong or were the Unger and Britton the only 2 possible 1st Round OL prospects left at that point…? Isn’t it very possible that the FO didn’t rate these guys as high as the guys already drafted and decided to move in a different direction. The DL was also a need position.

I can see the argument that they should have gone OL if Oher, Mack, etc. were all still there too. But there really only 2 OL choices at that point. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

just like the dork on pro-football weekly. a great way to up the ‘views’ of your site is to trash the Steelers.

My opinion on the matter anyway – an F is just so ridiculous it can’t be taken seriously.

so much easier when you create anger or disbelief. But then, The Sporting News ain’t what it used to be.

Hell, as far as I’m concerned we’re still trying to evaluate how good the 2007 draft was.

The OL isn’t a one year project, so I’m all for maintaining and improving the standard of excellence shown at every other position and gradually trying to rebuild the OL. If the question is whether the OL improved from this draft, I’d say yes, just not dramatically. I’d rather see a huge improvement and a new coordinator, but we went 12-4 against a really tough schedule and won the SB with what we have, so it’s hard to complain.

We had 2 primary immediate needs (o-line, cb) and 2 secondary needs (d-line and wr). Let’s see, we addressed all of them in the draft. Yeah, what the heck, give us and F. Lost our 1st and round pick to injury and got nothing out of our 2nd round pick last year……..gee, look what that did to us! Bring it on and let’s go get #7!

I like how they addressed needs without TRULY reaching. None of them were reaches in my opinion. They didn’t draft a bunch of primadonnas. They didn’t draft a bunch of track stars. They didn’t draft a bunch of guys that impress you in shorts. They drafted a bunch of FOOTBALL Players. I feel good about this draft. The only problem a see with a few of them is…will they be good enough right away to supplant anyone on the roster? I don’t mean that in a bad way. I know this…there are going to be some heated competitions this summer! One thing all of these guys don’t lack is heart and drive.

It’ll take 1-3 years before a draft can really be assessed. Some guy will get thrown in the fire, others will have time to watch and learn.

Half the time I think news stories are written just to piss people off and get them to click a link/buy a paper!

Lets sum this up. The steelers drafted exactly the type of guys they wanted. To the steelers, I think this draft was an A. Smart, hard-working, high-character guys. Let me go back to this all-important quote.

MT: How much are you willing to be seduced by talent? One of the things we’ve talked about, quite frankly, is that we’re not going to allow that to happen. Those are the things you can’t measure, the character, the toughness, the smarts. We’re more inclined to be seduced by those things.

The steelers drafted who they wanted.

It is always interesting to hear people different perspectives on the draft. Coach Tomlin and Colbert summed it up best on how they thought they performed…Of Course you always leave a draft thinking you’ve done well, these are YOUR guys. The truth is only time wil tell…For anyone to make an assesment the day after the draft is ludacris, these kids have not even practiced yet. Draft grades are given our to the teams that select the biggest names. BIG Names = Good Grades

And for all the criticism about our O line. How soon all of the experts forget that this O line did win the superbowl, or was I dreaming??? Didn’t think so. Great NFL lines are made by contanuity, if we though theses guys were a bunch of bums we wouldn’t have signed them all. We are drafting for players 45-53, not for starters day one.

As for our draft this year, I was very pleased, but time will only tell. I think the kids that nobody are talking about could end up as the best we selected. A.Q. doesn’t have the measurables which gives us a bad grade, but the dude can flat out play. Let’s see who has a better career him or Unger. Also I have this feeling that there is something really speacial about Joe Burnett. UCF isn’t neccessarily a football hotbed, but the talent to come out in the last two years has been impressive…ie Kevin Smith and Brandon Marshall. Break down the tape and watch him play, please somebody tell me the difference between him and Jenkins, Davis, Butler, or Denver’s 2010 first round pick.

As for our grade, give me about 3 years and I will get back to you!

Mike Tomlin on Urbik

He’s a right guard, of course, a four-year right guard from Wisconsin. He’s a big guy. He’ll fight you.

Bengals Waive Gary Russell

Rather than look at whom each team drafted, draft grades would be far more accurate if teams just received grades on how well they draft period. I’m sure down the line the quality of a draft class is more closely correlated to the team who drafted them (for myriad reasons) than to anything else. Face it: pundits and fans have seen very little of most or all of these guys. I only saw Mike Wallace play two games this year and I probably saw more of him than most draft experts. Even if they see a guy perform, there is a reason they are football writers and not scouts: they don’t know jack about talent. Even that dude with the bouffant hair do.

With that in mind, here are my rankings of this year’s draft class based on historic draft performance of the teams and their FO personnel. It’s not perfect, but better than guessing about guys I know nothing about, which is what most of these guys do:

Indianapolis, Baltimore, Pittsburgh: A
New England, Philadelphia, Miami, (see: Parcells), NYG: A-
San Diego, Green Bay, Atlanta (Dimitroff): B+
Everyone else: B-D
Oakland, Cincy, Cleveland, Detroit, San Francisco: F

I have bet three times in my life, but I would bet large sums of money that in 3 years these grades, which don’t have any relation to what I or anyone else thinks of this year’s picks, proves more accurate than 95% of grades based on opinions of personnel drafted.

He has to be the single most reliable talent evaluator in the NFL. Really, you have to think pretty highly of yourself to second guess picks by guys like Polian, Newsome, and Colbert.

But did CBS grade the right team?

Questionable move: Waiting until the third round to address the offensive line and doing so only once.

Last I checked, AQ Shipley played offensive line.

# Second-day gem: Fourth-round pick Mike Wallace is a speedy receiver who could help fill the void left by Nate Washington.

Uh we selected him in the third.

Translation: CBS and the rest of the haters can hate but that only helps our rookies get motivated on every snap.

I’m no expert, but it seems to me that most of the “draft gurus” of print and screen lack a certain depth of understanding about our favorite franchise. As we’ve discussed in this forum before, they appear to have Steeler-blinders on, and that’s a good thing. I was stuck watching the coverage on ESPN and they went over to commercial or were interviewing someone else for what felt like every Steelers’ pick. I am already sick of Sanchez and Stafford even though they haven’t played a down. They paid the bare minimum of attention to our picks. (and annoyingly little attention to any of the second day activity – just focused on day one analysis for top picks). What I gleened from the talking heads was the vague statement that it’s a typical Steelers draft.

By that I would suppose they actually mean another Championship draft ;)

I like it that way. No style points.

What they miss is that the organization isn’t going to hang the future on the promise of a few…that they’re searching for tough, characterful players. My grade doesn’t count for anything, but I give them an A for getting someone from SN to give them an F.

We’ll see how these recurits pan out in a few years.

Its true and probably not questionable, we didnt do as good as we surely could do in the draft this weekend. And the fact 80% of the specialists are grading it poorly whats to discuss?? Are you happy with the picks? Maybe, so what? There are another 3869 combinations that would please us somehow and would even sound coeherent, so what? That does not take out the fact Colbert n Tomlin didnt do their best. They even confessed they tryed to trade up at some point and didnt make it. Thats a bit lame to me..
Personally I think its a C grade draft. Its ok but not close to very good.
I think they should have been more agressive , trading up and down more wisely.
And its unquestionable that our biggest immediate need was OL reinforcements/REPLACEMENTS!! and they got cocky just adressing it late in 3rd round and 7th .. maybe it will be all fine, maybe Shipley will become a probowler, thats not the case, the case is we should have drafted highly rated athletes for our OL period.
I also dont understand why do we need 9 CBs?? YEah check our depth now, we have 9!! WTF?

I would like also to say to those of u who call Colbert genious at off seasons , u are retarded! Even if u think we won 2 SBs is directly connected to him is totally retarded… We could have not won any SB in the late years with exactly the same roster and FO if one or two little things didnt happen here and there. Its called random factor. If Holmes dont cacth that ball we lose the championship, and nobody would be calling us the greatest franchise ever (just a stupid example) .. What leads to a SB cannot be 100% quantified. Its much complex to that and as most games of life, luck has big part in it.
Im not saying we arent great, of course we are, we are one of the best franchises for sure, ad we do hold a singular record right now, but that means little for the years to come and I dont think Colbert is the smartest GM in the business neither is Tomlin the smartest coach, at al! I do like Tomlin more then I like Colbert though..
But so what? We can still win another champ with another below average OL .. or not! Maybe Big Ben will get the biggest hit of his life at week 15 and be out for the entire post season and we are screwd and everyone will curse Colbert, Tomlin and Arians for months ’cause the line stink and they didnt get the best they could n last weekends draft and Charlie Batch cannot lead us to a SB obviously..
Finally I dont want to sound negative, I just cannot stand irrational optimism. The draft job was poor, the whole offseason deals were questionable and that is all there is to say. It might not affect us badly, but it just might, we will see!