Pittsburgh Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert said in March that he believed the general consensus around the league is that trading down in this year’s draft would be a wiser course of action that looking to trade up.
Now with the draft just days away, Colbert is doubling down on that thought when it comes to the Steelers.
According to Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Colbert said Pittsburgh will not be looking to trade up in the draft when it kicks off on Thursday night.
“We won’t be trading up because we can’t,” Colbert said. “We can still trade down and, with the depth of the draft, that’s a real possibility. Or, at least, it’s an option that’s available to us.”
Pittsburgh is lacking some ammunition if they did want to trade up. They don’t have a third round pick to trade after moving up in the draft last year.
However, with the relative depth of this draft class Colbert believes the Steelers will still get a highly-talented player with the 15th pick.
“The player that is going to be available to us at 15, in years past, you may have had to been picking at seven or maybe eight to get the same quality of a player,” Colbert said. “There are easily 15 players available that we will be very happy with if we are able to pick them”