John Clayton of ESPN.com listed his top teams at evaluating talent and drafting consistently great players. He pegs the Steelers as the #4 team behind the Pats, the Colts, the Chargers and just ahead of the Ravens. I guess he’s only looking at the past 5 years rather than the history of each franchise. If he wee looking at more than just the past 5 or so seasons the list would look completely different. The Patriots, while they’ve been great the past 7 years, have been pretty much abmismal for the rest of their existence. The Colts are similar (at least the Indy version) in that they’ve had a few shining (read: fluke) years until Peyton arrived…all of a sudden they are all geniouses. The Chargers…come on. They had one great draft as a result of Eli crying and forcing SD to trade him.

Then we come to the Steelers. They have and will always rely on the draft…and I think their success cannot be argued with. It’s simply amazing that they have 31 players on their team that they acquired through the draft. I’m certain that number grows if you were to count the undrafted free agent rookies that the Steelers have picked up and groomed into solid contributors.

Taking John Clayton’s basic criteria though…it’s an ok list. Definitely a tribute to Kevin Colbert. Although we are on the verge of maybe his toughest and most critical draft yet.

On to the multitude of links…

• With the Scouting Combine approaching…SI.com shows us a flashback of a gangly, inaccurate QB who couldn’t show his skills in the same way that Senior QB’s could. The combine seems to be the sole reason that he took a free fall to number 11 in the draft. Thank you combine.
• Free Agency tracker. Aka, Steelers shopping list. Aka, Everyone but the Steelers shopping list. So, if the Steelers could and would only sign one player (not named Faneca) from this list…who do you want? I choose Marion Barber III. Um yeah…but wouldn’t he be the perfect Steelers runner?
• ESPN has listed their 4 greatest draft classes of all time and they put it together in a fancy little presentation. Check it out. LP’s opening line is, “Regarded near-universally as the greatest one-year talent haul in NFL history, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 1974 draft was a four-by-four windfall.” Four Super Bowls in six year and four of these players elected to the HOF. (and four hyphens all in the same sentence). WOW…there were a lot of draft picks back in the day. In 1974 the Steelers drafted 17…SEVENTEEN players.
• Hop on over to NFL.com for some NFL network features on the AFC North. Up first…Path to the Draft: AFC North Prospects. And then for 8 minutes and 21 seconds enjoy NFL Total Access’ AFC North Season Recap.
• The Steelers.com annual season recap is up. For all stat nerds, there are tons of PDF files with statistics, bios, rosters, depth charts, etc.. Good stuff.
• Kevin Colbert explaining the original intent of the “Combine”…”The main purpose is to give us a chance to get a physical,” Colbert explained. “The physical was the original purpose and still is the main purpose of the combine, the actual physical examination. Since then it’s grown into the workouts, and after that it became to where we’re now doing the psychological tests and interviews.” Funny, I always thought a Combine was for harvesting crops in the fall. It’s interesting though to hear from an NFL mouth that thing has gotten out of hand. The original, simple purpose makes sense. This mutation of the original combine, not so much.
• Here’s a Lynn Swann interview from Jan 29th with Dan Patrick…a little late but always good.