Labriola on Day 1 of the NFL Draft

“It’s not about Omar being new. We’ve done what we do in terms of our preparation.”

The obvious storyline throughout this Steelers offseason typically came back to the impact of the franchise’s change at general manager from Kevin Colbert to Omar Khan. Colbert, hired in 2000 to replace Tom Donahoe atop the Steelers player personnel department, had served in that role for 23 NFL Drafts, and those drafts had been used to construct rosters that played in three Super Bowls and added two Lombardi Trophies to the franchise’s collection.

But Colbert retired after the 2022 NFL Draft, and Khan was hired to replace him, and along with that move came a restructuring of the personnel department. New people were brought in from other teams, responsibilities were shuffled and redistributed. What would it all mean, and how would it impact how the Steelers would go about their business of roster building?

While it appeared the Steelers were more active in free agency this time, what the team actually did was what it usually did, which was utilize that avenue to fortify various areas of their depth chart to set themselves up to be able to enter the three days of the NFL Draft without any urgency to pick a particular position to plug an obvious hole. They would be able to pick their board.

One of the things their draft board was telling them was that there were two distinct levels of prospects at the offensive tackle position, and so when one of the players they slotted in the upper echelon was still available as the picking approached the midway point of the first round, they were aggressive and made a trade to put themselves in position to get their man.

Their man turned out to be Georgia offensive tackle Broderick Jones, and the manner in which they got their man was to send their fourth-round pick (120th overall) to New England to move up from No. 17 in the first round to No. 14 in the first round to spend their first-round pick on an offensive tackle for the first time since…