Steelers General Manager Kevin Colbert is stepping down from his position after this year’s draft. But before he does, he’s helping lead the search for Pittsburgh’s new quarterback to replace the retired Ben Roethlisberger.
Joining PFT Live from the Scouting Combine, Colbert said not having Roethlisberger behind center for the first time in 18 years will definitely be different. But the club is going to look everywhere for its next offensive signal-caller.
“When I came in, we didn’t have Ben, we got him a few years into it,” Colbert said. “So we’ve got to look at it as to, what’s next? We know he’s not coming back. In previous years, it was, he may not be coming back. Now we know for sure he isn’t. So now we have some concrete ideas about what we need to do.
“And we’ll be open to every option possible. We already have Mason Rudolph, Dwayne Haskins on the roster. Will we look at trades? Absolutely. Will we look at free agency? Sure. We’ll look at the draft. And we’ll try to pick out the best way to maybe move on, because we know we are moving on for the first time in 18 years.”
But even as the Steelers need a quarterback, Colbert said Pittsburgh won’t force the issue with a passer who’s not up for the job.
“What we won’t do is we won’t make false evaluations based on that and try to make somebody into a franchise quarterback that we don’t envision as one,” Colbert said. “I don’t think going into that [2004] draft, the one year we had a losing season, we were very fortunate there were three Hall of Fame quarterbacks available and we were able to get one of them. Is that going to be the case this year? I don’t know.
“Again, we’ll look at every avenue. But we’re not going to deem a guy a franchise quarterback. They have to do that after they join your team. And hopefully, we make the right decisions for a player who can help us win a Super Bowl down the road.”
Colbert added that the Steelers have to weigh what acquiring a veteran would cost in draft picks versus what it would be to have a pair of picks. But either way, Pittsburgh won’t just throw in the towel on a season.
“We’re never going to say, we don’t want to compete. The objective will always be to compete for a Super Bowl,” Colbert said. “We’ll never talk about rebuilding, retooling — anything along those lines. We want to win a Super Bowl and we’ll just try to make the best decisions we can.”