Off Set podcast with Rob King and Jay Caufield<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cThey have one goal. It\u2019s very simplistic. We want to win a National Football League championship, period. And we\u2019re gonna try to do it this way,\u201d Colbert said. \u201cIt\u2019s not that you don\u2019t have ideas that you can bring from the outside, but you quickly understand that, look, they\u2019ve been successful. Sure, they want some different ideas, but those ideas are always going to be under the understanding that we\u2019ve been successful. We wanna get back there, what else can we do? But in the meantime, we\u2019re probably gonna do it this way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
None of this comes as a major surprise to those who have followed the team for any length of time. It manifests itself in small ways like the lack of large signing bonuses for undrafted free agents and the hard negotiating cutoff once the season begins. But this overall philosophy is a guiding hand that influences every major decision they make at 3400 South Water Street.<\/p>\n
There is a reason why they have only had three head coaches since Chuck Noll was hired in 1969, and why they value things like going to St. Vincent College for training camp every year. It\u2019s all part of respecting the traditions of the franchise and trying to recreate the success they have enjoyed since the early 1970s.<\/p>\n
While many would argue the need for the Steelers to modernize certain aspects of their operation, that just isn\u2019t how they tick. Though, to be fair, Omar Khan seems to have brought forth some positive change in regard to contracts and making bigger free agent signings and splashier trades through the first few years of his tenure.<\/p>\n
Mike Tomlin has said that his teams work too hard for him to focus on anything other than winning in the present season. That isn\u2019t just a saying, the Steelers legitimately believe, right or wrong, that they can compete in any given year and they position themselves as best as they possibly can to do so.<\/p>\n
There have been lulls. The Steelers only made the playoffs four times in the 1980s, and they have obviously failed to win a playoff game since the 2016 season. Colbert says the Rooney family understands that is part of the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Chief understood it, Mr. Dan Rooney understands it, Art Rooney (II) now, who\u2019s our president, understands \u2014 look, you\u2019re going to have a lull in a given season, in a given era,\u201d Colbert said. \u201cWe can\u2019t have too many lulls, but they understand the expectation of themselves and also the people working for them accept that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the salary cap era, the most consistent way to build a strong team is hitting on draft picks and developing a pipeline from within the organization. Colbert did an excellent job at that throughout his tenure as the GM with the exception of the last handful of seasons. Part of that can likely be attributed to an aging Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers\u2019 desire to win while they still had a window with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a hard thing to balance. We wanna win now,\u201d Colbert said. \u201cBut we never lost sight or tried to never lose sight of the future. So we never would mortgage draft picks or whatever just to win in a given season. Our challenge was to know we\u2019re gonna win now, but we\u2019re never gonna lose sight of what\u2019s down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a difficult balancing act when championship windows can open and close in the blink of an eye. We will see how this philosophy comes into play for the 2026 offseason when the Steelers are expected to utilize their stockpile of draft capital to make a move for a franchise quarterback in the first round.<\/p>\n
Will they make the rare deal to mortgage the future to take the big swing? The years since Roethlisberger retired make that seem necessary but never forget the guiding philosophies of the Rooney family and how they come into play with virtually every decision the Steelers make.<\/p>\n
Even when Art Rooney II eventually passes the baton, presumably to Daniel Martin Rooney<\/a>, you can probably expect many of the same guiding principles to be at play behind the scenes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only a handful of NFL teams date back to the league\u2019s earliest days, and even fewer have remained…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[4393,7,9977,6,18270,520,57,2360,18271,426],"class_list":{"0":"post-53358","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-art-rooney-ii","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-kevin-colbert","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-off-set","13":"tag-pittsburgh","14":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","15":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","16":"tag-rob-king","17":"tag-steelers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114514534741885116","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}