Monday should be a somewhat entertaining day as Pittsburgh Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert and head coach Mike Tomlin will hold their annual pre-draft press conference at approximately 1 p.m. EST.
As usual, Colbert and Tomlin won’t reveal much of anything about the upcoming draft during their question and answer session with the media but perhaps we may learn a thing or two about how they went about the process of evaluating players this year and maybe some final thoughts on the overall positional depth of this year’s class.
Other than some generic draft information, I will be really interested to see if Colbert is willing to comment on if the organization has decided if they want to pick up the fifth-year option on outside linebacker Bud Dupree. The deadline for that to happen this year is May 3, or two weeks from yesterday. In case you’re curious, former NFL agent Joel Corry now has the amount for Dupree’s fifth-year option set at $9.232 million.
When the Steelers have decided to pick up previous fifth-year options it was known that they would do so ahead of the draft taking place in those years. To date, the Steelers have only declined picking up a fifth-year option just once since it came into existence and that was two years ago with outside linebacker Jarvis Jones.
Colbert and Tomlin both might be asked on Monday to talk more about the Steelers free agent additions this offseason and perhaps even asked to comment on a few things that cornerback Joe Haden said this past week about possible secondary changes in 2018 as well as the miscommunication problems the defense apparently had in the playoff loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
In case you are looking to kill some time this weekend, here is the Colbert, Tomlin pre-draft press conference from last year. My, quite a few things have changed since then.
