Steelers Lose Analytics Staffer to Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys have hired Steelers data analyst Will Britt, and he will head to Dallas as part of their remade analytics staff this offseason. This will be one of the first challenges that Omar Khan faces from a staffing perspective, with the analytics staff becoming thinner.

According to Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports, Britt will join the Cowboys as their strategic football analyst. Britt joined Pittsburgh in 2021. But he follows a long list of analytics staffers that have left the Steelers for other destinations. The man that Britt replaced, Jay Whitmire, ended up with the New York Jets. Along with Tosin Kazeem, he made up the two key members of Pittsburgh’s analytics staff.

However, Omar Khan has talked about a focus on analytics. Khan has a background in the data analytics that are becoming more essential across all spheres of sports. It is just part of the puzzle, but one that the Steelers seem undermined to truly handle right now. So, it is likely that Britt’s job will be replaced by someone that Khan hires. But Kevin Colbert did not embrace it as much as Khan seems to embrace it.

““Obviously the analytical world is big,” Colbert said before the 2022 NFL Draft. “It’s getting bigger. And we respect that, we understand it. We work within it… but it’s never going to take over for the evaluation. It never did in my world. Coach (Mike Tomlin) understands it, he respects it. We acknowledge the analytics side more so than the pro side of things when you’re comparing apples to apples.”

Regardless of how much they value the analytics part of the equation, only one staffer doing that is not suitable for today’s NFL. Meanwhile, Khan has expanded the staff for scouting over the offseason. So, it seems that a hire will likely be made, if not multiple hires that could pull together the analytics staff.