Colbert’s Thoughts On The Draft And The Health Of Linebackers

Do you expect a player you draft to start right away?

“The system forces young players in sometimes before they’re ready. I know that’s one of the concerns we have with this current draft class. I’ll go on record and say this is the deepest class I’ve seen in 30 years, and a lot of that’s due to the influx of underclassmen, but I will also say in regard to that, even though it’s a talented group it has a bigger chance of failing because you’re going to get a lot of kids who aren’t physically or emotionally ready for this.

“So, to that point, we believe the longer a guy can delay his play, the better his chances of succeeding. Not to say that a rookie can’t come in and impact the season, or have a great start of his career, because we’ve seen that happen. But I think you see many more who benefit from learning and preparing and being ready for the challenge that they face.”

When asked which aspect of the team needed more new talent, the offense or the defense, he said, “It depends on what the result is after free agency. I don’t know who the defense is right now, because you could look at certain positions like the defensive line and say you have two under contract. I don’t know what the group is yet. Potentially I would say yes, because we have younger players and less free agents on the offensive side I think.”

Isn’t it natural to want to fill these needs no matter how much you want to draft the best available athlete? 

“No. We can’t. You just can’t do it. If we bypass a great player to fill a spot, we’re going to disrupt the natural evolution of the roster and we can’t do that. You can’t. As tempting as it may be you have to avoid that.”

 Is it more tempting with a 32-year-old franchise QB when you feel the window might be closing?

“First of all we’re very fortunate to have a franchise quarterback because the majority of the teams in this league can’t say that, and we have one. There’s nobody we’d rather have than Ben. That’s a big part of where we are as an organization. We realize he doesn’t have 10 years left. We all would acknowledge that. Does he have 2? 3? 5? I don’t know.

“Hopefully he stays healthy and we get the maximum years out of him. But what we have to do is surround him with the best talent, and he has to play to that level that he’s capable of playing to if we do get that talent around him. We all have to come together and try to win the Super Bowl. But we understand there are only so many snaps left with a franchise quarterback. When we’ll get another one, who knows. You never want to be in a position to draft a franchise quarterback because most of the time it’s at the top of the draft. We hope we’re never back in that position and we have to make the most of the years that we have left with our franchise quarterback.”

Lastly, when asked about what draft positions jump out at him, his response was, “I’m telling you it’s as deep across the board as any draft I’ve seen in 30 years. It’s a record number of underclassmen that obviously have enhanced it from a talent standpoint, but we’re also concerned about how many of those players came out prematurely and won’t be ready for this next challenge. That’s the thing we have to be able to sort through because they’re not all ready for this.”