Second-guessing drafts is the ultimate in armchair quarterback play. It's easy to say which player a team should have picked a year or two after the fact.
And immediate analysis of a draft is often faulty. Anyone remember all the fans ripping the Steelers for taking Le'Veon Bell over Eddie Lacy in 2013?
That said, the Steelers have their share of swings and misses. All teams do. Jarvis Jones in 2013 and Artie Burns in 2016 were misses in the first round. Both were need-based selections and when you make a pick based on need, you run a greater risk of missing on those selections.
How do Kevin Colbert and company match up when judged against their peers? Well, it's a difficult question and one that must be judged on a curve.
For example, how can you reasonably judge Colbert and the Steelers, whose average draft position earned in his 21-year tenure has been 22.7, against an organization such as the Browns, who are perennially picking in the top 10?
Football Outsiders came up with a way to do just that recently.
Looking back at the past decade with their analysis of drafting efficiency, Football Outsiders ranked the Steelers 29th total draft capital from 2010 to 2019. That formula takes into account draft position, how many picks a team has -- ones acquired via trade count -- and then ranks all 32 teams.
The only teams below the Steelers in this metric over the past decade are the Cowboys, Bears, Falcons and Saints.
The teams at the top should surprise nobody. The aforementioned Browns (1st), 49ers, Buccaneers, Rams and Bengals spent a healthy portion of the past 10 seasons picking at the top of the draft thanks to their finishes at the bottom of the standings.
Given the draft capital earned by those teams at the top, it's no wonder franchises such as the 49ers and Rams have had more success in the end of the past decade than they did early on. The 49ers and Rams have represented the NFC in the past two Super Bowls.
The other three teams -- the Browns, Bucs and Bengals? Not so much.
Why? They haven't turned that draft capital into viable NFL stars for the most part.
That is shown in Football Outsiders second ranking, which measures draft return. In that metric, which quantifies the what you acquired via the draft regardless of position, the Steelers rank ninth overall.
In most of their drafts in the past decade, the Steelers have ranked at least average in terms of overall return. The outlier in this case was their 2010 draft. That draft, which brought them players such as Maurkice Pouncey, Jason Worilds, Emmanuel Sanders and Antonio Brown, was considered a top-10 return in the decade.
Their worst draft of the decade according to this metric was in 2015, though the play of first-round pick Bud Dupree could certainly continue to change that outlook. But second-round selection Senquez Golson never played a down in the NFL because of injuries, third-round selection Sammie Coates was a rare miss at the wide receiver position for the team, and only fifth-round pick Jesse James and sixth-round selection Anthony Chickillo are still in the NFL.
At the top of the draft return chart sit the Seahawks, Ravens, Browns, 49ers and Packers.
But Seattle's high ranking is based largely on its drafts from 2010 through 2012, which rank among the best in the decade and set the Seahawks up for a couple of Super Bowl trips. The Ravens got a huge boost from the 2018 draft, which ranked third in the decade, while the Browns have had just one awful draft -- 2013, which was one of the worst of the decade.
At the bottom of the draft return chart are the Jets, Chargers, Bears, Cardinals and Falcons.
Finally, Football Outsiders looks at both metrics to measure return vs. capital. It's there that the Steelers do quite well, ranking fourth overall in the past decade behind only the Seahawks, Packers and Cowboys.
Via that metric, their 2010 draft was the best in the league that season. Their 2017 draft, which landed T.J. Watt, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Cameron Sutton and James Conner in the first three rounds, netted the fifth-best return that year behind only the Vikings, Bills, Rams and Saints.
Even their worst draft, in 2015, still ranked 26th in the league, which obviously is not good, but will again be affected greatly by the play of Dupree in 2020.
In this ranking, the Ravens rank sixth overall, the Bengals 23rd and the Browns 31st.
LOLLEY'S VIEW
As mentioned, the Steelers have had their misses. But by in large, they've done quite well in the draft given their overall position, with only three teams doing better in the past decade.
It's no surprise the Ravens rank highly, as well. They typically do a good job in the draft.
The Browns? They've consistently squandered the picks they have earned, either trading down out of spots -- to acquire additional picks they then use on the wrong players -- or making poor selections such as taking the likes of Corey Coleman, Danny Shelton, Cameron Erving, Justin Gilbert, Johnny Manziel, Barkevious Mingo, Trent Richardson, Brandon Weedon and Phil Taylor in the first round from 2010 through 2015.
Their only good first-round pick in the first part of the decade, Joe Haden, was released at the end of training camp in 2017 and promptly signed with the Steelers.
