NFL cut-down day highlighted the failures of the end of the Kevin Colbert era in Pittsburgh
The Pittsburgh Steelers released veterans DeMarvin Leal and Mark Robinson on Tuesday as teams across the league trimmed their rosters to the mandatory maximum of 53 players.
Leal was a backup defensive lineman/outside linebacker whose size (6’4-288) made him a classic “tweener” — too small to play the interior of the line, and not explosive enough to play the edge. The Steelers struggled to find a role for him in their defense, precipitating his release.
Robinson was a project the team could never complete. A running back for three seasons at Ole Miss, he converted to linebacker his senior year. The Steelers embraced that experiment, but Robinson was unable to master the intricacies of the position at a high level. Rookie Carson Bruener beat him out for the team’s final interior linebacker spot.
Cutting Leal and Robinson won’t make much of an impact on the product the Steelers put on the field. But it does underscore something that has impacted the team significantly — namely, the disastrous draft record of former general manager Kevin Colbert over his final five seasons. Colbert was the architect of three Super Bowl runs and two titles in Pittsburgh, and will forever be remembered as an excellent general manager. But like many, he stayed a bit too long, and lost some of his ability to identify impact players. With Leal and Robinson gone, only six Steelers of the 37 players Colbert drafted from 2018-2022 remain on Pittsburgh’s roster. Those six players are Mason Rudolph, Alex Highsmith, Pat Freiermuth, Isaiahh Loudermilk, Calvin Austin III, and Connor Heyward. Of them, only Highsmith, Freiermuth, and possibly Austin are starters.
With DeMarvin Leal and Mark Robinson cut, only 6 of 37 picks remain from the final five years of the Kevin Colbert era. Brutal. #Steelers pic.twitter.com/WV3KmFutBx
— Tommy Jaggi (@TommyJaggi) August 26, 2025
By contrast, Pittsburgh’s AFC North rivals, the Baltimore Ravens, landed nine of their current 22 starters from the 2018-2022 drafts. They include quarterback Lamar Jackson (2018), tight end Mark Andrews (2018), defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike (2020), receiver Rashod Bateman (2021), edge Odafe Oweh (2021), safety Kyle Hamilton (2022), tackle Daniel Faalele (2022), tight end Isaiah Likely (2022), and center Tyler Linderbaum (2022). The Ravens have added some key pieces in free agency as well, including running back Derrick Henry and corner Jaire Alexander. But the core of their team was built in those drafts. If you want evidence as to why Baltimore has overtaken Pittsburgh as the team to beat in the AFC North, start there.
The most egregious picks of the late Colbert era occurred in the first round. That’s where a team is expected to find cornerstone-type players. Baltimore landed Jackson and Hamilton in those drafts — two of the best in the league at their positions — as well as Bateman, Marquise Brown and Patrick Queen. Brown and Queen no longer play in Baltimore, but remain impact players in the league.
Meanwhile, the Steelers selected Terrell Edmunds, Devin Bush (for whom they traded up), Najee Harris and Kenny Pickett. Their first-round pick in 2020 was sent to Miami for Minkah Fitzpatrick, so they used their initial selection that year on Chase Claypool.
Claypool was one of four wide receivers Colbert took in Round Two of those drafts. He also selected James Washington in 2018, Diontae Johnson in 2019, and George Pickens in 2022. Washington was unable to separate at the NFL level and washed out of the league after a few seasons. Johnson, Claypool and Pickens, all of whom were talented, were also highly flawed. Their maturity issues, selfish behavior and lack of professionalism won them all a ticket out of town when it was deemed their disruptions outweighed their production.
Missing on Pickett in 2022 as the replacement for Ben Roethlisberger was also a major setback. Many believed Colbert reached for Pickett in that draft, and in doing so cast the Steelers into a quarterback purgatory from which they are yet to escape. Some have suggested Colbert’s motivation was to land a replacement for Roethlisberger as his final legacy in Pittsburgh. Perhaps. Whatever the motive, the misevaluation was costly, and continues to hamstring the team.
For what it’s worth, Baltimore landed Jackson with the 32nd overall pick in 2018, just four spots after the Steelers selected Edmonds. Hindsight is 20/20, and whether the Steelers could have developed Jackson into what he has become is a fair question. But passing on him there, as Roethlisberger’s career wound down, will lead Steelers fans to forever wonder, “what if?”
Colbert also failed to draft a single lineman on either side of the ball in the first two rounds of any of those drafts. He selected four receivers, a quarterback, a running back, a tight end, a linebacker and a safety. Perhaps the success he’d had earlier in his tenure with late round selections and undrafted free agents like Brett Keisel, Chris Kemoeatu, Ramon Foster and Alejandro Villanueva convinced him he didn’t need to spend premium picks on linemen. But the lines on both sides of the ball deteriorated in those years, and the Steelers have had to invest significant resources the past several drafts to rebuild them. Baltimore’s 299 rushing yards in last year’s Wild Card playoff game, and the offense’s 28th-best average in rushing yads per attempt last season, are sobering reminders of what happens when you’re not very good up front.
I didn’t write this article to bury Colbert. All Steelers fans should be grateful to him for the teams he built earlier this century that created another great era of football in Pittsburgh. But, with Leal and Robinson now gone, we also cannot ignore how the final several seasons of his tenure contributed greatly to its current state. Pittsburgh is a team in transition, trying to find its identity and its direction. Look no further than the 2018-2022 drafts for the culprits of that predicament.
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Drafting players is not easy work, Pgh didn’t draft well, for the most part, in the ’80s, either. Maybe 22 exceptions, being generous, in a decade, with many more draft choices.
I think we really need to look at Pickett in a different light. Pickett while a first-round selection was also the 20th pick of the draft. I think it was a worthy shot. As a starter he went 14-10 for the Steelers with 13/13 TD/Int. None of these things are great, but he wasn’t a disaster. His biggest problem in Pittsburgh and seemingly continuing was injuries. He has never been able to stay healthy enough to have sustained playing time.
Trading a 1 for Minkah was a solid move and Najee was a good productive back in Pittsburgh.
Bush seemed to start well but that injury really seemed to change him as a player. He became tentative and that just can’t be the case at that spot on the field.
Edmunds I can’t defend on any level other than to say he gave them consistent play and didn’t miss time. Seemed like a reach on draft day and he just remained a replacement level player.
The Steelers did not do a good job of getting any second contract guys from that timeframe and that is problematic but really not unusual.
Nope, not unusual at all. OTC did a workup on draft pick retention from ’19-’22, and the Steelers placed 28th in the results, keeping only 61.3% of all of their draft picks for one season (they didn’t extrapolate out further.) The Chiefs were far and away the best at retaining their picks, the Jaguars were the worst.
It’s one thing to miss / mis-evaluate individual players. It’s another to have all the wrong priorities in the draft for this long a period of time.
Neglecting the trenches was malpractice. How many times has it been said that you build your team from the trenches out? And drafting all those headcases to be our WRs with 2nd round picks….that’s just asking for trouble regardless of the talent those guys may have had. And then drafting a RB in the first round? You only do that with generational talents now, and Harris was no generational talent. And if he wanted to leave the franchise with the next great QB, he had chances to do it with Jalen Hurts and Lamar Jackson, but that would mean drafting a QB before Ben retired…so, no.
I really don’t think Lamar would be worth a crap here. Pittsburgh has not developed QB talent very well, and I’ve not seen anything that makes me believe they would have followed the path the Ravens took to develop Lamar. Hell for that matter I’m not sure they’d have gotten much out of Hurts either.
That’s not the point though. LJ and Hurts are NFL franchise QBs and Colbert could have drafted them (and they weren’t late-round fliers that nobody knew about – they were well-known). If the coaching staff can’t develop a QB, well that’s not Colbert’s problem.
The problem is that strategically over this time period he had all the wrong priorities in the draft (regardless of how the coaching staff developed them, which you can’t fault him for). He should have been constantly restocking the trenches and then drafting a QB when one became available instead of waiting until Ben was gone before turning his attention to it. And all those wasted 2nd rounders on headcase WRs….ugh.
I agree. Not making excuses, just pointing out how they were not slam dunk QB’s by any stretch, and Pittsburgh doesn’t have much of a development process.
I’d like to see them get serious about QB development with a staff dedicated solely to that process. Then they could draft a flier QB, and see if they can make them either trade bate or their next QB. Either way there should always be a QB with massive upside in the development stage in Pittsburgh. QB is the most valuable currency in the NFL, why not try to develop them.
Thinking about this, isn’t the QB-developer on staff usually either the OC or the HC? Like Shanahan or McVay
or Matt Canadaor one of their so-called disciples? More than developing the QB, they design the offense to play to the QB’s strengths. The way the Steelers hire coaches and coordinators, I have a hard time seeing anyone like that entering the picture, unfortunately.Exactly. That’s why I want an entire staff whose job is only development.
That’s what I was trying to say on last night’s livestream, unsuccessfully, who would have coached Lamar back then!
I just posted something similar about Kenny Pickett. That it didn’t work out doesn’t mean that the pick wasn’t the right thing to do. I am not at all seeing how the pick is still impacting the Steelers. Yeah, the Steelers are maybe missing a non-QB starter somewhere had someone other than Pickett been chosen. Would the team be much better off though? They still wouldn’t have a long term QB so I have my doubts.
I think this is well written. Part of the problem is that the comparison is to Baltimore who really was not a viable contender after winniing the Superbowl in 2012.
They only won a single playoff game over the next seven years
Ravens were drafting better, but not tremendously, but then seemed to really hit big in 2022, I think, retaining something like four players from that draft.
The other thing the Ravens sem to be able to capitilize on that no other teams do other than maybe the Patriots, is the compensatory pick system which I think is a sham that should be scrapped.
For the years in question here, the Ravens made 49 draft picks to the Steelers 38.
I am not sure how missing on Kenny Pickett is still hamstringing the team? Who else would have been available at 20 that would have turned the Steelers into a contender had they picked him at 20 rather than Pickett? Forgetting that for a minute, what other QB would the Steelers have had access to if they hadn’t drafted Pickett? They had just signed Mitch Trubisky to be the next guy so it’s not like anyone else was going to fall into their lap. They didn’t play poorly enough in the couple of years after drafting Pickett to draft someone better, Pickett or no Pickett. Kenny Pickett didn’t work out. I am not seeing how that somehow crushed the Steelers, though. It was logical at the time.
Exceptional article. I pointed out the exact same thing about the end of Kevin Colbert’s tenure last night on our Pump Your Brakes podcast. I have been for years and I always get blowback from the peanut gallery everytime I point out the undeniable facts.
In no way meant to be disrespectful to Colbert’s HOF career and Steelers legacy, but only acknowledging that the modern day approach to roster building and player evaluation had passed him by. The decline was easily visible over the final 7-8 years of his career.
I completely disagree. At that time, the team lost De Castro before the 2021 season, Pouncy after the 2021 season and Villanueva in 2020. Colbert knew he needed to try and win immediately in the last few years of Roethlisberger’s career, so he tried to draft differently and pick guys of immediate impact while still trying to plug all the holes with an aging team retiring out. It’s a nearly impossible task. If he tried to just draft as usual, people would complain that Colbert wasn’t trying to win a championship with his HOF QB. A couple seasons of mediocrity is absolutely worth it in comparison to having Ben lead a bunch of developmental players. It’s not about Colbert “not keeping up with modern trends”, it’s an a team that was old and would have a ton of gaping holes suddenly all at once no matter who he drafted. Just look at how badly the Patriots fell after their window closed.
Another factor that was missed here is that with any regime change, the people at the top will always try to make sure their presence is felt by surrounding themselves with their guys. A coach change wasn’t ever going to happen, so Omar shaped the roster into something he prefers. Even then, it’s taken 3+ years to do so. This is not a fast process. Omar still doesn’t have a franchise QB, which is a major issue.
It’s also not like the team started performing dramatically better after Colbert left. It’s extremely difficult to build a championship team and find a true franchise QB, which are things you need to win a Super Bowl now.
We can agree to completely disagree.
Colbert blatantly ignored the offensive line for a decade. He had the good fortune of hiring one of the great Oline coaches in NFL history. Munchak took scrap heap UDFA projects like Alejandro Villanueva, Ramon Foster, etc. and turned them into Pro Bowl caliber contributors.
He failed to cultivate the necessary front office relationships needed with personnel around the NFL.
He stubbornly held onto draft capital like a old woman clutching her pearls, even when a proactive move or two for a defensive upgrade could have put the Steelers over the top during the Killer B’s heyday.
Colbert had a formula for success. That formula was ideal for the first half of his Steelers tenure, leading to two Lombardi Trophies. Not so much over the latter years of his career. Hence my assessment.
That being said, the most devastating event for the Steelers championship legacy by far was the death of Dan Rooney. The man was irreplaceable.
I feel like, in this case, two things can be true at the same time. In 2018, after Brown blew up, the team, under Art Rooney’s direction, threw their weight fully behind Ben.
The key paragraph I highlighted from Kevin’s article is this one:
For what it’s worth, Baltimore landed Jackson with the 32nd overall pick in 2018, just four spots after the Steelers selected Edmonds. Hindsight is 20/20, and whether the Steelers could have developed Jackson into what he has become is a fair question. But passing on him there, as Roethlisberger’s career wound down, will lead Steelers fans to forever wonder, “what if?”
Would the Steelers have replaced Ben with Jackson, like the Ravens did with Flacco? I don’t think they were ever even looking that way. And they did that in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. Literally four of the last five drafts by Colbert.
And as for the Pickett pick, again, how do they not take a chance on the local boy? That’s quite literally the Steeler way. Two people mentioned in the article are indicators of that – Conner Heyward and Carson Bruener. If Pickett had turned out to be a great starting QB for someone else, the questions would have been there. Maybe you don’t use the 1st pick on him, but wasn’t there a chance someone else might have taken him in round 2 before the Steelers got a chance.
That’s not to defend Colbert specifically. More of the point that this was really more of a team effort. Personally, the pick I regret most was the trade up for Bush. But many people within and outside the organization thought that was the way to go, Tomlin as much as anyone else.
I think the cascading effects of that pick influenced several of the following drafts. The Steelers might have Humphrey today were it not for them picking Bush in 2018 because they could have drafted Noah Fant in the first round that year. They might have had all those years of Metcalf, who I wanted them to draft in round 2.
Strong assessment, but I must state the obvious.
The Steelers were never going to draft Lamar Jackson. That wasn’t a Colbert miss because it was never going to happen. Not under Colbert, the Rooneys, or Mike Tomlin. Here’s why:
The Steelers are old school. They are never front and center with modern idealogy, terminology, and training. The Steelers still wanted a prototypical NFL QB at that time. They wanted a old school OC designing the gameplans. Kevin Colbert and Mike Tomlin were perfectly committed to that mindset.
Tomlin has never developed a QB in his life. He had never been asked to until Pickett. Complete and utter failure. Mainly because of Matt Canada, but I digress.
Harbaugh was about to be fired, so he rolled the dice and rebuilt the entire offense around Lamar Jackson midseason. He was desparate and his last act of desperation paid off.
That would never happen under Tomlin, because he has zero fear of ever being fired. None of the decision makers in Pittsburgh would have been desparate enough to completely rebuild the franchise around one player.
BTW The Ravens still haven’t won anything under Lamar, so it remains to be seen if it was all worth it or not. Good luck finding the next Lamar Jackson.
Yes.
I think this looks even worse when you consider that Rudolph is only here after leaving, and Freiermuth should’ve been Creed Humphrey.
Baltimore has drafted pretty well, but I think it’s important to recall that Lamar was NOT their #1 that season. No. It was Hayden Hurst, which was a giant miss. Jackson was a gamble that paid off due to QB development. Oweh was as big a swing and miss as Bud Dupree, and it sounds like they don’t intend to keep Linderbaum beyond his rookie deal. So, they have warts as well, and the next few seasons will be very interesting for them as they’re going to have to let players walk because they can’t afford them.
That’s the way the NFL cookie crumbles…