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Tomlin: 'Can't Find Players Sitting in Office'

By Ed Bouchette
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 7 years ago

Good morning,

Mike Tomlin received a compliment the other day for his hard work on the draft and it came from one of the longest-running hard workers in the NFL.

Gil Brandt, who turned 83 last month, was the Dallas Cowboys’ first player personnel director when they came into the league in 1960 and is still hard at it as a senior analyst for NFL.com along with his regular radio appearances on the Sirius NFL Network. He’s no stay-at-home, travling to pro days, combines and he lines up all the college prospects for the NFL draft-day show.

So, Brandt knows a hard working football man when he sees one and he told me that Mike Tomlin outworks them all.

“Tomlin has the best attitude,’’ said Brandt after running into the Steelers coach any number of times this spring.

“I said, ‘Coach, you’re everywhere.’ He said, ‘Gil, I can’t find any players sitting on my chair in my office.’

“The guy is very accommodating. At Baylor, for example, a bunch of people wanted to take his picture and everything.”

He did.

If the Steelers do not draft well, it will not be for a lack of effort, Brandt said.

“I’ll say this, the Steelers work, they’re out there everywhere. The head coach, the GM and some places they have Keith Butler and four other coaches with them.”

As for who they might draft in the first round, Brandt believes “they’ve identified him” but is not privy to the answer.

He did predict one characteristic of their first-round pick that won’t come as too much of a surprise to anyone who follows the team:

“I think the Steelers are going to take a defensive player player.”

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Onto some Stuff:

--- You may have noticed that the announcement about the timing of the NFL schedule announcement was made last night and the announcement of the schedule will be tonight at 8 p.m. Nice of them to do it around the Penguins playoffs and this afternoon’s Pirates game.

--- Brandt says the moving of the draft TV show from New York to Chicago, where it will be held for the second straight year, was a brilliant one.

“Chicago seems to be magical place to have the draft. New York is fine but there were 200,000 people in Chicago for the draft last year.’’

Brandt, of course, remembers the old days when the only ones who showed up for the draft were the coaches and personnel men and a few reporters. Now, all the coaches and personnel men stay in their home cities and call in their picks.

“In 1960, we drafted in a ballroom and guys came in with their Street & Smith football books, and the Pittsburgh newspaper.”

--- There are at least two players in this draft, at areas of the Steelers biggest needs too, that could be high rewards for those who might want to take them, but they come with injury risks. They include safety Karl Joseph of West Virginia and cornerback Kendall Fuller of Virginia Tech. If both had been healthy, the Steelers might not have had a chance to draft them at No. 25. As it is, they may have a shot at either. They put red dots on the injured players, some more red than others.

--- There also are those players who have had what we call “off field” problems. The Steelers have had at least one of those in for a visit recently, Robert Nikemdiche, a 6-3, 294-pound defensive end from Mississippi.

He would have been one of the top 10 players drafted if it were not for those “off field” issues that included him falling out of a hotel window, where investigators soon found drugs in the room.

After the various issues the Steelers have had with players and drugs (marijuana) recently, if they would draft this kid, they should have their own heads examined.