Kevin Colbert Faces Most Difficult Draft Process of His Career

PITTSBURGH -- Evaluating college athletes has become a much more difficult task for NFL scouts. As three Power Five schools cancel their fall seasons, teams are left with limited players to scout in 2020, and physical conditioning question marks for those who won't participate this season.

Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert is under contract until after the 2021 NFL Draft. In what could be his final draft, Colbert is facing the most unique draft situation in his ten years as GM.

"With some conferences deciding not to play, that's an issue," Colbert said on Wednesday. "At this point, NFL personnel is still prohibited from visiting a college campus. That was something that was handed down to us from the Commissioner back in March during the Pro Day season, and it's continued to be in effect. We respect that and understand it. We have to try to work around it all within the legalities.

"The schools that are playing, we won't be able to visit, but as of right now, we can go to a game and we can attend the game via a credential or a ticket. We try to minimize the air travel. We have pretty good coverage with most of the guys doing some driving. We have to do some air travel, but we will try to minimize it. It's different, but it's the same for everybody in our league. We will just try to make the best of it."

Colbert said one of the more challenging aspects of the process would be the unknown of the future.

The NCAA and NFL are trying to keep most of their dates for the NFL Combine, Senior Bowl, and All-Star games the same. However, the uncertainty of what's to come as the year progresses leaves those dates with question marks after them.

"Everything is so unknown," Colbert said. "The schools that aren't playing in the fall, they're hoping to play in the spring. How does that affect a possible all-star game or a combine situation? Nobody knows because until we get our dates, we just have to work under the assumption things haven't changed yet.

"In doing that, we have to cover schools that are playing, and we also have to evaluate the schools that aren't playing on their film from 2019. If they play in the spring of 2021, we can add that to our evaluation. Right now, we're just dealing with the known, and the known is there's three Power 5 conferences playing. There's a few outside of the Power 5 that are playing, but there's two that aren't. We have to keep adjusting accordingly. There could be bigger groups of guys to scout, less. We don't know at this point quite honestly, and we will wait for directions from the league as to further maybe creating the ability for us to attend more than just games. Will they add an all-star game or even the combine? We will just have to wait and see."

Colbert confirmed that the team can evaluate and test draft-eligible players earlier than the NFL Combine. Players that decided to opt-out of the season, who are rising seniors, are considered eligible, with the understanding that they can choose to take the NCAA's extra year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 guidelines.

The team can also test underclassmen under certain circumstances.

"The only underclassmen that we can look at, at this point without being officially included into the NFL draft are those players that were designated by their head coaches through an agreement with the AFCA, which allows us to evaluate them as underclassmen," Colbert said. "Until a player is deemed draft eligible by the National Football League, we cannot do anything with them other to evaluate him from afar and just watch how he plays."

The NFL will have an even more troubling time trying to evaluate players from smaller schools. The FCS has canceled their football season, which the Steelers have found players from in the past.

This year, Pittsburgh drafted Kevin Dotson in the fourth round of the NFL Draft. Dotson is a guard out of UL-Lafayette. He did not attend the NFL Combine despite being named an All-American, which many FCS players will have to deal with in 2021.

"Kevin Dotson, we had some All-Star game exposure to him," Colbert said. "We had a full season of college football to evaluate. He wasn't at a combine. We weren't able to go to his Pro day, so we just had to rely on what we thought of him as a football player from the three scouts that went in and saw him during the season. That player was evaluated. I can't say he was evaluated fully because we didn't have that Pro day or even a physical on the young man.

"As we move into this year, the guys that are playing will be able to give us some type of 2020 film, which quite honestly, I will be much more comfortable in evaluating a player that plays in 2020 more so than the guy that doesn't. When you take over a year plus maybe two or three months off from the game of football, I don't know what kind of player you are going to be coming out of it. Any way that a young man can play this given season, I think it will benefit him because we will have newer, fresher and a better understanding of what he may be moving into the NFL."

But when it's all said and done, Colbert is staying confident. He's aware of the challenges ahead of him and the team's scouting department and uses Steelers' scouting legends to help guide him through the season.

"Just like this past draft was different, this one will be even more different because of some schools playing and some schools not playing," Colbert said. "Again, like I reminded the guys this past draft, 'Listen guys, we have to do the best we can under the circumstances. There are no excuses. We have to find the best players we can under any circumstances. That is our job.' The great Bill Nunn, Art Rooney Jr. and Dick Haley, they did that under the circumstances of 1974. We can all look at that result and understand that is a great example of what can be done with less information or different types of information than we have available to us. We will take that challenge and do the best we can."

Noah Strackbein is a Senior Writer with AllSteelers. Follow Noah on Twitter @NoahStrack, and AllSteelers @si_steelers.