No matter where he went, Andy Weidl couldn't get away from Pittsburgh, couldn't get away from the Steelers. He carried what he learned 25 years ago as though it were a wrinkled family picture tucked in his wallet.
And it never really left his possession.
After beginning his NFL career as a two-year intern learning from Tom Donahoe and Hall of Fame scout Bill Nunn, Weidl worked for three other teams, including two Super Bowl winners, before landing back with the Steelers as assistant general manager three months ago.
Even though Omar Khan was named general manager, replacing Kevin Colbert, it is Weidl who will effectively assume Colbert's former role as the person in charge of player personnel, talent evaluation and preparing the board for the NFL draft.
"I think all those places have set me up for this," said Weidl, a Mt. Lebanon native, making his first public comments since being hired on May 24. "I had to go to those places to learn and develop and grow."
Weidl received two interviews and was one of the finalists to replace Colbert, who retired after 22 years with the Steelers. He was always considered one of the favorites for the position because of his western Pennsylvania background and previous connection to the Steelers but, more importantly, because he had experience as a talent evaluator and setting up a draft board.
Weidl did that the previous three years as vice president of player personnel with the Philadelphia Eagles, running their draft meetings and setting up the board for general manager Howie Roseman to ultimately make the pick. When team president Art Rooney II promoted Khan to general manager, he created a new position to accommodate Weidl and create a two-headed team.
"Whatever we can do to implement, to bring things, to add, to enhance and evolve a little bit, we will do it," Weidl said. "I've been fortunate to be around some great ones. I spent 13 years of my career with Bill Nunn and Ozzie Newsome, two of the best to ever do it. The things that they've done here, obviously, with Kevin, it's just a great opportunity to bring a dynamic collaboration."
For now, Weidl is getting himself acclimated to the job — more specifically, to the collection of players at training camp. That includes the seven players drafted by Colbert, not to mention the eight he signed in free agency, in his final acts as general manager.
Making the transition easier is the fact Weidl has been friends with Khan since they both worked for the New Orleans Saints in 2000 — Weidl as a national combine scout, Khan as an assistant in football operations. The Saints' head coach at the time was Avalon native and former Steelers defensive coordinator Jim Haslett.
"That's the great thing of coming to Latrobe and being up here as you get to be around each other," Weidl said. "We're up here, and we're in a bubble, working together, eating together. You're getting to know them, and it's accelerated because you're watching every day. We've got two more games to go, and we're about to find out more about our team as we go through this."
Weidl was a part of two Super Bowl-winning organizations — the Eagles in 2017 and the Baltimore Ravens in 2012 — and saw the type of player it takes to have a championship team. It was the same type of player he saw when he was an intern with the Steelers in 1998-99.
Even though the Steelers were 6-10 and 7-9 in the years he was with the organization, he was around the young players who would go on to form the nucleus of the playoff and Super Bowl teams of the 2000s.
"You saw a veteran Dermontti Dawson; you saw a veteran Jerome Bettis, a young Hines Ward, and, man, those guys are tough and resilient," Weidl said. "You couldn't break those guys. Joey Porter and Aaron Smith, I was there for their first two years. Watching those guys grow in the league, looking back at how they acted and handled themselves, I've always thought back to that. Those guys are some of the best warriors this league has seen.
"I saw it with the Ravens. I saw it with the Steelers here, with the guys here. At Philadelphia, we had the same thing. We had guys that were tough-minded and strong-willed. You couldn't break them. They showed up every day, and they were resilient. That's something you look for in the DNA of a player. It's something I believe in and that I learned here at an early age from Mr. Nunn and from the Steelers organization, and it's carried me through."
With a new regime in place, it remains to be seen how much additional input, if any, coach Mike Tomlin will assume in the acquisition of players or making draft selections. In reality, though, Tomlin has always had plenty of say-so in those matters with Colbert.
Weidl said the key is communication and understanding the type of player that fits with the Steelers' system and culture, something he learned a quarter-century ago when all this got started.
"I've been here for two-and-a-half months, and the one thing that's pretty evident about coach Tomlin is that he is passionate and he is a football lover," Weidl said. "He loves the scouting aspect of it, and he's great to be around. The energy he brings, the passion he brings, his love of the game — he's a great historian of the game, too. He's somebody you can learn from."
