The Pittsburgh Steelers have been fortunate enough to have some incredible drafts over the last few decades. In fact, their draft class in 1974 is almost universally considered the best of all-time. That group won four Super Bowls in six years and four of them were inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame (five if you included undrafted free agent, Donnie Shell). However, like all teams, the Steelers have also had some misses. Artie Burns and Jarvis Jones immediately come to mind. But at least the team can say they tried. Not all picks will pan out, look at Devin Bush. What has to be most frustrating are the picks that were right in your hands and you didn’t select them.
Most fans think that the Steelers failing to pick up quarterback Dan Marino was the biggest miss in the organization’s history. Marino was a hometown boy who attended the University of Pittsburgh, but the Steelers passed him up and he went to the Miami Dolphins in 1983. Recently, former Steelers General Manager Kevin Colbert appeared on a podcast and shared his biggest regret during his time with the team, and it is missing a player that became much greater than the great Marino.
Colbert is also a hometown boy. He grew up in Pittsburgh and attended North Catholic High School. He joined the Steelers in 2000 as their director of football operations and took over as general manager in 2010 where he stayed until 2016. At that time he shifted more into a combined role of vice president/general manager until he retired in 2022.
He is well known for presiding over some excellent drafts during his tenure with the Steelers and helped the team make it to three Super Bowls and win two of them. He wasn’t around obviously for the 1974 draft to take credit or take blame for the 1983 Marino miss, but he recently joined a podcast put on by the athletics program at his old high school called Forever True to Thee.
On the show, he was asked about his biggest successes as a general manager and his biggest regrets. He noted that he loved to see players who were free agents, especially undrafted ones, find tremendous success like James Harrison and Willie Parker. As for regrets, he said he knows that he should have pushed the organization to select differently during the 2000 NFL Draft.
“I always go back to my first year as Steelers GM and Tom Brady was picked in the sixth round. We took Tee Martin in the fifth round. I always say Tee Martin was a great fifth-round pick. Tee Martin was a good backup NFL quarterback, obviously, Tom Brady was Tom Brady and at that point, nobody recognized that, including New England. New England includes themselves on that, because had they known they would have taken him with their first pick, which they didn’t have that year. They had a second-round pick and that was Adrian Klemm,” shared Colbert.
Colbert said he would never say anything derogatory about Tee Martin. Martin was a quarterback and had helped his school, the University of Tennessee win the BCS National Championship. He was a solid selection and about what you expect for the fifth round.
He said that when drafting, you expect your first, second, and third-round players to become starters, your fourth and fifth-round guys to be backups, and your sixth and seventh-round guys to be practice squad types.
“So when you look back, obviously we chased Brady for however many years he was in New England. He was special and we and the rest of the NFL missed it. A lot of times people point out, ‘You took Tee Martin,’ and I say, ‘Yeah, we did,’ I love Tee. As a fifth-round pick, he was a really good fifth-round pick because he made our team and had a career and continues with the Baltimore Ravens as their quarterback coach. Happy for Tee, proud of Tee, but was Brady the better player? Obviously, history has proven that.”
Would Tom Brady have had that same success in Pittsburgh? It is impossible to say. Colbert acknowledges he also found some late-round gems such as Brett Keisel in the seventh round, Antonio Brown in the sixth round, and Chris Kemoeatu in the sixth round. But as he said, none of them were Brady.
The Steelers did chase Brady for years. It seemed that the path to the Super Bowl always went through Foxboro and few teams were lucky enough to knock Brady off and make it. During Brady’s 20 seasons with the New England Patriots, he played the Steelers during the regular season 12 times and won 9 of them. During the three occasions the Steelers made it to the AFC Championship and were up against Brady, they lost all three. Brady helped his teams win seven Super Bowls, six of them in New England.
