With Days to the Opener, Steelers Tackle Plans Still Up in the Air
With days until the season opener, the Pittsburgh Steelers plans at OT with Broderick Jones, Troy Fautanu and Dan Moore remain up in the air.
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers still aren’t sure if first-round rookie Troy Fautanu will be available to play in their season opener against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. Fautanu has yet to be a full participant in practice since suffering a left MCL sprain in the preseason opener against the Houston Texans a month ago.
Furthermore, whether he does play or he doesn’t play, where he and the rest of the team’s three top tackles is something that head coach Mike Tomlin isn’t willing to reveal — or doesn’t know at all, depending whether you want to take Tomlin for his word about the tackle situation.
“We’ll determine that as we get closer to game time. He was a partial participant (Monday). It went well. We expect him to be more so tomorrow, and so the closer he gets to healthy, we’ll have a better reflection of how we might divvy that up, but obviously, the first two guys are going to be participants, but he could be as well.
“Spencer Anderson has played some tackle in the past, as well. Those are the candidates. What the mix is will be determined by how we distribute reps and what we perform in those reps given.”
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Dan Moore Jr. has been the team’s starting left tackle since 2021, and if he plays, it will almost certainly be on the left side. Moore has had very minimal reps at right tackle over the years, and has always professed discomfort when he’s been asked to do it. Moore also hasn’t necessarily been a world-beater at left tackle, with the team using first-round picks in consecutive drafts in an attempt to find his replacement. A less-than-comfortable Moore probably would not be a quality option at right tackle.
Then there’s 2023 first-round pick Broderick Jones. Jones came out after playing just one season as a starter at Georgia. That came at left tackle, and Steelers general manger Omar Khan said this offseason that he intends for Jones to play there for the Steelers eventually.
But when is currently the $64,000 question. Jones played on right tackle as a rookie last season and played the vast majority of his reps during training camp at right tackle. He played about three-fifths of his reps in the preseason at right tackle.
Fautanu, this year’s first-round pick, played mostly left tackle in college, but did so for a left-handed quarterback at Washington — this week’s Atlanta backup Michael Penix. He has spent almost all of his time as a pro at right tackle. If Fautanu plays, it almost certainly will be on the right side. That would seem to set up a flip back to the left for Jones.
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But Jones’ lack of practice there, and his ongoing struggles in dealing with the aftermath of a training camp elbow injury, make the potential success of that plan unclear. Jones has been wearing a large brace on his right elbow after injuring it early in training camp. He said the brace has limited what he can do, and gave up multiple sacks in the preseason.
If that brace is badly impacting his play, moving it to the inside arm at left tackle would likely making this worse, not better. There does not seem to be a guarantee that, due to injury and inexperience, Jones would be a better option at left tackle than Moore right now.
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“I’ve made no determinations regarding that,” Tomlin said. “Obviously, he’s worked a lot at right. But again, we’re going to continue to watch that as we work through the week because versatility has been an asset for him and us.”
So the Steelers are in wait-and-see mode. The first inflection point will be whether or not Fautanu is medically cleared to play. That would make the whole conversation moot.
The second is, assuming he is cleared, whether or not he looks better than Jones at right tackle, or looks good enough that the team wants to try to move Jones to the left side to push Moore.
And the third is whether Jones can be a better left tackle option than Moore. So it could still be Moore-Jones, it could be Moore-Fautanu, and it could be Jones-Fautanu, depending on how those inflections points play out over the next five days.
Those have been the options for some time, but Fautanu’s injury put the team in the position to have to figure this out at the 11th hour instead of getting multiple weeks of practice to sort out their preferred alignments.
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