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You'd like to know what player the Steelers are going to pick in the first round of the NFL draft Saturday. So would Bill Cowher.

True, you've heard that know-nothing lament before. It is the usual pre-draft posture of the coach and the organization. But this time it rings true with the Steelers selecting 30th, their latest first-round position in franchise history.

"We're trying to figure out who's going to be there for us at 30," Cowher said Monday at the traditional pre-draft media chat. We don't have any idea."

Likely Cowher overstates, but you get the picture.

That the Steelers, with four Super Bowl triumphs to their credit, now draft later in the first round than ever before despite being stopped in the AFC championship game, owes to league expansion. That's another page for Dan Rooney's ongoing gripe about expansion teams. The newcomer Houston Texans draft first overall.

This Steelers' 30th position is later than the sum of their combined positions in 2001 (19th) and 2000 (8th).

In the 1975 draft, which followed the Steelers' first Super Bowl championship, they selected 26th and nabbed defensive back Dave Brown.

In 1976, picking 28th, the catch was tight end Bennie Cunningham.

The Steelers also would pick 28th in 1979, grabbing running back Greg Hawthorne and 28th in 1980, picking quarterback Mark Malone.

Hawthorne was a bust. Brown, Cunningham and Malone were contributors either here or elsewhere, but none made the Pro Bowl for the Steelers. Brown was named to the Pro Bowl while with Seattle in 1984.

More recently, the Steelers picked 29th in 1996, the draft following a loss to Dallas in Super Bowl XXX. Offensive tackle Jamain Stephens was the pick and, yes, consider him another bust.

Blame the Steelers, but also blame the system. Penalizing the productive is the NFL way. Excellent teams must pick their talent after others have had first crack. It doesn't guarantee failure, but it only makes sense that it stacks the deck against the team picking late.

For the Steelers to get Terry Bradshaw required the first overall pick in 1970. Joe Greene came fourth overall in the first round of 1969.

The Steelers don't get a crack at this year's Bradshaw, Fresno State quarterback David Carr. The Texans already have claimed him.

Nevertheless, the Steelers worked up a draft report on Carr, according to the team's personnel head Kevin Colbert.

"We still have a full evaluation on him because the first thing is, we're going to have to play against him, and then someday he might be a free agent," Colbert said. "These evaluations are not only used in the draft, it kind of starts the book on him as a pro."

The list of other players the Steelers will not get a shot at is lengthy, as is the time that could transpire until they pick. Each team is allotted 15 minutes to make a pick in the first round, meaning if it went the maximum, the draft would be more than seven hours old before the Steelers got on the clock. That's the extreme, but four to five hours should be the actual wait.

During that time, the Steelers will monitor the process and contemplate trading up, say, if a guy they had rated top 10 or top 15, drops to 25th.

"That tempts you," Colbert said.

The Steelers were active last year, trading down three spots in the first round and still getting their man, nose tackle Casey Hampton, then using another team's pick to grab NFL rookie of the year Kendrell Bell, a linebacker, in the second round.

This year, maybe the Steelers won't be as active.

"We're probably just going to sit tight and see what falls to us because of so many variables picking that (late)," Colbert said. "We're still going to put them (players) up there the way we like them and hope that someone drops to us that we don't think will drop to us."

Judging by the Steelers' mixed success when picking late — all pre-Colbert — trading out of the first round entirely might make sense, if only to save some contract money.

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