Teams are making their final preparations for this week’s NFL Draft, including the Pittsburgh Steelers, who own the 24th overall pick Thursday night. Due to the unusual circumstances surrounding last season, a handful of top prospects including LSU receiver Ja’Marr Chase haven’t seen the field since 2019. While Kevin Colbert respects that decision, it sounds like the Steelers GM will be actively avoiding players who sat out 2020 due to COVID concerns.
“As I stated in the summer, if a player chooses to opt out for whatever reason, that's their decision and we will respect it," said Colbert via Nick Shook of NFL.com. "However, if a player played in 2020 and those players are of equal value, the one that didn't play and the one that played, we'll take the one that played because we don't know what the opt-outs will be like in their first season back in football.”
While rust is a valid concern for those who didn’t play last season including the aforementioned Chase, Miami edge-rusher Gregory Rousseau, Northwestern’s Rashawn Slater, Virginia tech standout Caleb Farley and Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons, it raises eyebrows that Colbert would openly downgrade a player for prioritizing their health and safety. While the Steelers have been more public than most on this particular subject, their sentiment is shared by many across the league including the Raiders, who, according to team reporter Vic Tafur of The Athletic, have held “lively conversations” in recent days discussing how best to gauge players who opted out.
“We believe it's hard to sit this game out,” said Colbert. “It's not to say we're not going to draft somebody that opted out. I couldn't say that. But if I have a choice and we have a choice, we'll take the one that played if their value is close."
Each year, the lead-up to the draft is an excruciating nitpick parade with ruthless scouts casting judgment on everything from hand size to Wonderlic scores, making a dehumanizing process even crueler with their unflinching criticism. Colbert was careful not to use loaded words like “selfish” or “weak” in his assessment of last year’s opt-outs, though it’s obvious these players carry a certain stigma in NFL front offices.
White-knuckled purists still pine for a time when pro prospects didn’t skip bowl games to avoid injury or pick and choose Combine events to accentuate their strengths. But in a cutthroat league where nothing is promised—on average, NFL players have a much shorter shelf life than athletes in other major sports—it’s hard to fault players, many of whom come from nothing, for maximizing their earning potential as best they can. Staying out of harm’s way amid a global pandemic is just an extension of that mindset. Of course, by that same token, the Steelers and Raiders both have businesses to run, and if they feel it will take too long for players who opted out to get back up to speed, avoiding them is their prerogative.
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