Colbert, Steelers Architect.

Though their draft picks might not have exactly set the world on fire of late, IMO they aren't nearly aren't as bad as some of the horendous in season moves or lack there of ... there is where some real "head scratchers" are in my book.


scruffy

 

All threads will naturally find their way to being a Cowher v Tomlin debate in the end. 'Tis the law of the board.

 

I'm sure that everyone else has noticed this already, but you do realise you've simply listed the 'good' Cowher players and left out all the others?

If you want to compare like with like, then go for it. But don't list the likes of Bruce Davis and Kraig Urbik if you're not also going to list Ricardo Colclough and Mathias Nkwenti, etc.

 

My take is KC does a great job finding WR'S . Not sure if the scouts for that group are better or if WR'S are easier to transition to the NFL ? Or what the deal may be ? KC has a horrid record drafting DB'S . Do they under value the position ? Do they have poor scouting ?

As a whole KC has done a good job , but not a great one . Is he getting better at his job or falling off ? My take is he is not getting better and if he continues his same approach he will soon be at the bottom of the list.

I give more credit to Ben , Coach T , and Coach Haley than I do KC. I see a lot of holes in the current roster and we win in spite of those holes not because KC is the Master of all Masters .

Most say if we trade Ben or cut him this Team would suck . If you believe that then you are saying we have a bad Team . I will give you a great QB should help you win more games , but if you must have a Great one to win you have a bad Team by definition.

 

I am confused. cowhers list is awful small. did you just pick his successes? cause I remember some bad ones

 

Okay, I rephrase it, what have you seen from JJ, Shazier, or Shark that suggest they could be great?

 

smoke and mirrors.

every team is going to have misses in the draft, but if you notice the stars during the cowher/Colbert years were much bigger longer running better players for a longer time than what Colbert/tomlin have put together. we can go on forever singing KC's greatness for all the great picks during the cowher years and just a couple of those type players during the tomlin years.

AB was an after thought for Colbert. 6th rounder. was that Colbert being a wizard? hardly. we had Wallace and sanders and sweed as the main players for that position. AB was pretty good in college but he alone worked his arse off to get where he is now. kev didn't know that then but is glorified for seeing it. BS.

lets really look at where we are now that kev has lost most of the good scouts we used to have back in the day. it's really starting to come to light for me just how good KC is in his picks without help of a coach (cowher) and one of the best scouting departments there was. they built those teams with KC and cowher and yes they had a hard time doing it after the noll years and it's loss of stars. but they did finally.

those guys are gone. now more of the picks are truly on kevin now and we are not seeing that type of results by just he and MT. just because the steelers used to do it a certain way doesn't mean it will still work that way. free agency has come to the forefront and keeping with the same old through the draft thinking hasn't quite produced the same results. a true architect would move on with the times and adjust accordingly.

rebuild your scouting department the way we have rebuilt the coaching department finally. we have been very lucky compared to a lot of teams in that we have a franchise qb to keep some stability to this disfunction enough to keep us afloat.

we lost a SB, had a one and done playoff hit followed by two 8-8 seasons followed by a playoff hit in a one and done blowout at home. hardly a gleaming improvement. again we have a franchise qb which most don't and we are just scratching the surface.

no KC is struggling as far as past accomplishments that he's taking credit for when it comes to him being the architect. cowher had his faults too, but it was a different era and he did know a couple of things. he could build a defense, run the ball, had some pretty good O-ines and use that gem of a scouting department for those things. offense wasn't as important to him. at least a high powered offense. we could also bring players along slowly back then.

Colbert can take credit for those days but on his own in free agency era, I'm not anointing him as a great architect. the team that we are saying is ahead of us (NE) have probably a lot less hits in the draft and are very active in free agency. they too have a franchise qb. just making the playoffs to watch us leave quickly is not a successful season. I know it is for some on here but not me.

I've been saying for a long time KC isn't all he's cracked up to be and without a lot around him for help and wisdom it's starting to show he can't rebuild alone as a great mind or architect. no he's not the worst either but shouldn't be put on a throne either. that's my take. take it for what it's worth and that's not much.

 

I've gone back and reread this thread and....wow, where to begin with this post.

First of all this thread is about Kevin Colbert but you've turned it into a Cowher vs Tomlin debate. As someone said above (Elvis, I believe) this is appropriate because you have to compare the duo. Fair enough. But under the Cowher/Kevin Colbert list....

You have listed Jerome Bettis. He was a Tom Donahoe acquisition.
You have listed Lamar Woodley.... He was A TOMLIN/KC acquisition.
You have listed Aaron Smith.....He was a BC/Donahoe acquisition.
You have listed Joey Porter....He was a BC/Donahoe acquisition.
You have listed Hines Ward...He was a BC/Donahoe acquisition.

You're agenda is obvious....to slam Tomlin. That's fine but lets not hi-jack this thread and rewrite history to do it.

Secondly, you're viewing these lists from different perspectives. As flawed as it is, go back and look at the Cowher/KC list from March 10, 2007, just before Tomlins first draft. You'd have a group of guys who were fresh off an uninspiring SB title defense 8-8 season. Lamar Woodley would be some guy from Michigan on your draft board, you would not be singing the praises of Santonio Holmes...he was a rookie with 2 TDs, and I guarantee you that would not be talking about James Harrison...he was a back up who had FOUR total career sacks at that point and ZERO in 2006.

Not knowing that the near future held two more SB appearances, I guarantee that your assessment of the team and talent would be quite different. You'd be looking at a team that despite winning a Super Bowl in 2005, came out flat and uninspired for the first half of 2006. A team with a promising young QB and not a whole lot else on offense. Their O line was starting to age at that point and their best player, Alan Faneca was entering the last year of his contract. Yes, they had promising high draft picks at WR and TE but both were still unknowns. They had a retiring leader in Bettis who was being replaced with an undrafted rookie and an aging Porter who was being replaced by a journeyman LB who had been cut 6 times already. They had young talent on D in Polamalu and Taylor, but Aaron Smith was starting on the backside of his career (as was Ward on offense). Keisel was an unknown at that point too... a 7th round pick who had just completed his first year starting.

In other words, things didn't look so rosy.

 

I had to quote one of the best comments in this thread. There has been a lot of change in the last few years, and it shows in the scouting department.

 

Good post.
I thought too that many of those players were signed prior to KC. But I think the reason the conversation turned into a Cowher vs Tomlin debate is to say that they have more influence on the team than KC does, so maybe he isn't as good or as bad as people make him out to be. Just a thought, not my opinion.

I think the bottom line is, we had a good team, we tried to keep the nucleus together and got caught up paying too much for some aging talent. We had some good picks and bad picks during both the KC-Cowher years and the KC-Tomlin years. We only have a few first and second round picks from 2007-2009 still on the team. As such, that has hurt the team. But, we are getting better. Pouncey, Heyward, DeCastro, Bell are solid. JJ and Shazier have promise. The team can get better this year, by having a strong draft. The difference between this year's draft and perhaps other years, is that we are counting on the players to immediately help this team win. Whereas with Holmes, Timmons, or Heyward that may not have necessarily been the case.

 

Given that Colbert is the constant across the two HCs, it becomes easier to say that the difference in draft successes is the head coach, more than the GM. I am not saying it's a valid argument, because other factors have come into play. Tomlin is coaching in a different era than Cowher, who could hold on to players a little longer, allowing rookies to develop and become starters when ready. In today's NFL, draft picks are expected to start immediately. That had not been good for LeBeau, who liked to develop his defensive players. (Remember how awful Troy was early on???)

That said, I do think Tomlin's issue is a lack of vision, something Cowher had. Great HCs have it. Tomlin's teams don't seem as cohesive, purposeful. This is how we end up with wasted picks in Sepulveda and Archer. If you don't have a personnel philosophy, you end up trying to makle a "team" out of talented but disjointed parts. Archer may have been a great addition to Philly...but not in Pittsburgh.

 

I think you're wrong on those. Donahoe was out the door in 1997, as a result of criticizing Cowher for the team's playoff performance against New England in 1996.

UPDATE:

Ok...researched this after the fact. I'll leave this post instead of deleting it and scurrying away. Donahoe left in 1999...but was he gone prior to that 99 draft in which Smith and Porter were drafted? I can research further.

 

He left Jan 15th 2000, or there about. THe AP released a story on the 15th stating he resigned.

 

2012 Steelers Media Guide

http://prod.static.steelers.clubs.nfl.com/assets/docs/2012_MG_2.pdf

Scroll to page 21. He was hired January 15, 2000

 

which is right after the 99 season and the SB in jan. of 2000, prior to the draft of 2000. which he stated he had very little to do with getting hired so close to the draft.

 

Colbert wasn't anymore of a wizard with AB than New England was with Tom Brady. Sometimes, people can just play. How many blue chippers eat crap year after year? I wish he'd done better in some spots and acknowledge that he hit the walk off in others. The draft ain't a gimme, if it was we wouldn't *****ing year after year about certain picks here and there. Nor would any other team.

 

Which is my second point. If these players, and ones they bring in this and in coming years, mature and develop and produce a couple of more Super Bowl appearances in the next 4 or 5 years, we will look at lloyddestroy's Tomlin/KC list a little differently, wouldn't we? To be fair you have to look at his list of the Cowher/KC era through the lens of the spring of 2007. And when you do, you won't see it as you do now. You'd probably view it a lot less favorably. Cowher/KC is a finished product. Easy to judge. Tomlin/KC is still a work in progress. Time will tell.

 

This is interesting, as I don't recall Donahoe staying on that long beyond his criticism of Cowher after that 96 playoff game. What I do remember is that the press was reporting that the relationship was strained and that one of them had to go. Cowher won that battle.

 

agreed. the only clincher in having a work in progeress is that aging franchise qb will only be here so much longer. the through the draft process, is getting harder to count on in the case of development and then being able to get them into a second contract when developed. scouts now days have to give prospects that can play early in many more rounds. those two drafts without any players left hurt development of a team. it's harder to make that up without a high activity in free agency now days. not the suh type signings but above the cam Thomas signings.

 

I'm not disputing that some of these players you mention will get better, but we need playmakers to get to that upper echelon. a lot of these guys have only shown more of a role player role so far. championships are built on talent and consistent playmakers, not hopes and dreams. it's time for many of these players to then step up to the level it takes for us to get beyond development. every team has pretty good players.

 

Cowher had all those great players and then he choked in the playoffs, he only won 1 Super Bowl in 15 years.