Quote Originally Posted by phillyesq
In the last 20 years, the Steelers have essentially made three boom or bust picks. One of those (Ben) worked very well; the other two (Troy Edwards and Jamain Stephens) did not.
Whenever you take guys from small schools, some boom and some bust (take Ike Taylor from Louisiana-LaFayette vs. Ricardo Colclough from Tusculum, for example...neither was a first rounder, but we struck gold with the guy we took in the 4th, and struck out with the guy we traded up for in the 2nd). With that said, however, I wouldn't necessarily put Ben and Poe in the same category as Stephens and Edwards. To wit:

Jamain Stephens went to North Carolina A & T...Division I-AA school (I suppose they call it the "Football Championship Subdivision" now as opposed to Division I-A's "Bowl Championship Subdivision", but whatever...same thing). Troy Edwards went to Louisiana Tech. Granted, that's where we got Terry Bradshaw too, but that was a different animal. When we drafted Edwards, La. Tech had only been in Division I-A for a decade...they were I-AA up to 1989.

That's different than Miami (OH) from the MAC, which has proven to be a respectable grounds for developing NFL talent, particularly at QB (although most of them are on our roster now...Ben, Byron, and Charlie are all MAC QB's...I'm shocked that we never signed Pennington near the end of his career). Memphis is no slouch either...they've been in Conference USA, and are moving to the Big East after this season. Mike Tomlin and Randy Fichtner coached there, DeAngelo Williams and Isaac Bruce played there, etc.