Day Two of Prospect Visits

With less than a month until the NFL Draft, teams have begun to host players at their facilities for pre-draft visits. Teams use these pre-draft visits on players that are recovering from injury to monitor the player’s recovery, players with character concerns or players that teams are unsure of how to rank on their draft boards, either because of lack of playing time or the system in which they played during college (such as a 4-3 DE that is potentially adjusting to a 3-4 OLB). Over the last four years, only one of the Steelers first round picks (Maurkice Pouncey) was brought in for a pre-draft visit. However, quite a few of their later round picks were brought in for visits. To give a sense of the caliber of the prospects, I included rankings from four of my favorite draft sites: Draft Breakdown, Optimum Scouting, ScarDraft, and Mocking The Draft.

When you look at the attributes the Steelers like in a player, Jones has all of them. Team Captain? Check. Played for a winning team? Check.  Played in a major conference? Check. The SEC is what it is. Highly productive college career? Check. Jones led the nation in sacks (14.5) and tackles for loss (26.5) last season, following up a 13.5-sack season in 2011. The Steelers are likely bringing in Jones to have their doctors conduct an in-house evaluation of Jones’ spinal stenosis, which has received mixed reviews since Jones declared for the draft. He left USC after his freshman season because of the neck injury but had two highly productive years at Georgia after the diagnosis. Some reports out of the combine were negative and indicated that teams might not be willing to take the risk on Jones because of his injury concerns, which is why it is important for the Steelers to get an in-house evaluation of his condition.