Exclusive: Pat Meyer Breaks Down Steelers OT Battle: ‘You’re Gonna See Broderick Playing Out There at Left Tackle’
Pittsburgh Steelers offensive line coach Pat Meyer breaks down the offensive tackle battle, promising Broderick Jones playing time at LT.
UNITY TWP., Pa. — So far through training camp, the Pittsburgh Steelers plan at offensive tackle has not been abundantly clear. The Steelers have mostly played Dan Moore Jr. at left tackle and Broderick Jones at right tackle, with rookie first-round pick Troy Fautanu working largely with the second team.
Sometimes, Fautanu has been elevated to the first team, flipping Jones to the left side. More frequently, Fautanu has moved up to the top unit and Jones has just come out, or shifted to the second team on the right side.
So what gives? And what is the Steelers plan at offensive tackle?
“Over the course of the next couple weeks here, it’s going to figure its own way out,” offensive line coach Pat Meyer told Steelers Now in a 1-on-1 interview at St. Vincent College on Sunday.
The Steelers are using the first couple of weeks of training camp to try out all of the potential pairs between Moore, Jones and Fautanu.
There are a lot of moving pieces. Moore has only played left tackle in his career, but the Steelers ultimately would like to replace him as their starter at that spot after using first-round picks on tackles in each of the last two drafts.
But which one, and when remain significant questions. Fautanu played mostly left tackle at Washington, but he did so with a left-handed quarterback at the helm the last two years. Jones played sparingly at Georgia, but played more left tackle than right tackle. As a rookie last season, all of his opportunities came on the right side.
The Steelers ideally would like to identify the best spots for Moore and Fautanu this offseason and leave them there, but there’s a process. They want to see how much better Jones looks on the right side with a year of experience under his belt, so they have a baseline to compare that to what he looks like on the left. They also don’t want to overwhelm Fautanu with reps at this stage in the process, preferring to let his play tell them when he’s ready for more playing time.
“Getting them when they’re young like this and training them to settle in on one spot, ideally that’s what we want to do,” Meyer said. “Right now, what we’re doing is rotating. We’re getting guys so that whoever the odd man out is, he has to be able to play a backup role. That’s our thought process right now.”
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In short, what most of the fanbase wants to see — Fautanu on the right side and Jones on the left — is coming. And don’t take my word for it, especially when it comes to Jones playing left tackle. You can be sure that is on the way.
“I want to see him out here doing it,” Meyer said. “I want to see him do it in the preseason. You’re gonna see Broderick playing out there at left tackle in the preseason games, too. We want to see it.”
That doesn’t mean that will be the arrangement that the Steelers decide contains the best five, but they’re certainly going to get a look at all the options.
“We’re going to play the best five combination that we feel we have on game days,” Meyer said. “It’s a good problem to have. We’ve got a lot of youth and a lot of depth here. We’ve got some vets that are the leaders of groups.”
In his first two weeks of training camp at right tackle, even while battling an elbow injury, Meyer sees significant improvement from Jones compared to the player that left off the 2023 season.
“Broderick has been great,” Meyer said. “He’s obviously got more experience now. He’s understanding football as a whole better, in terms of just angles, not even just talking Arthur’s system and the new system we have here, just football in general, he’s understanding it better. Again, he was a young rookie coming in last year. So he’s understanding football a lot better. … He’s tenfold better than what he was coming in here last year, and he should be. He’s growing up coming into his second year. That’s where you’ve got to have his biggest leap.”
Fautanu has been picking things up even quicker than Jones did, and is accordingly ahead of the curve of where last year’s rookie was this time in 2023.
“I’m not surprised, because that’s why we picked him,” Meyer said. “I’ve been happy with the way that Troy has come along. He’s learned. It’s a different game here. It is. The speed is totally different. The pass rushers are different. It’s just a different game. By no means am I surprised. I’m happy the way that Troy has progressed. A mature kid, ball is important to him, he comes into work every day and wants to know why we’re doing things and how he can get better.”
The question will be whether the Steelers deem Fautanu ready soon enough to move Jones to left tackle before the start of the regular season, or if Moore will start again while the rookie continues to develop.
“As we get into next week and start prepping for the Texans, the competition is just going to get more and more intense,” Meyer said. “The best guys are going to end up playing for us.”
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