The Pittsburgh Steelers wrapped up their first week of 2017 OTA practices on Thursday and while we haven’t learned a lot as it relates to which players were lined up where and with what unit, a few details related to those kinds of topics have surfaced nonetheless.
While we knew ahead of Thursday’s practice that veteran cornerback William Gay has non-surprisingly been working as the first-team slot defender at the start of this year’s OTA’s and that third-year cornerback Senquez Golson has admittedly been cycling in after him, rookie cornerback Cameron Sutton let the media know where he’s been seeing the bulk of his practice time after the team’s final practice of the week.
According to Chris Mueller of The Beaver County Times, Sutton, the Steelers first of two third-round draft picks this year, said Thursday he’s primarily been working at the outside cornerback position during OTAs, as opposed to the nickel spot. This news probably isn’t too surprising being as Sutton played mostly on the outside during his four years at Tennessee.
Ever since Sutton was drafted, the main speculation has been that he could eventually become the Steelers starting slot defender at some point down the road and while that might ultimately wind up being the case, we can probably can expect him to continue to work mostly on the outside as the OTA practices continue on next week.
The Steelers probably want to get a good look at Golson in the slot between now and the start of training camp being as they still have a lot of questions about him as he’s yet to play in a single game due to shoulder and foot injuries that he suffered during his first two seasons in the league.
In addition to adding Sutton to the cornerback room via the draft this year, the Steelers also selected former Utah cornerback Brian Allen in the fifth-round. Ahead of the draft they also signed cornerback Coty Sensabaugh via free agency and he has experience playing both inside and outside.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s too early to draw any hard conclusions based on where players line up at during OTA practices. It is, however, fun to monitor these little depth chart tidbits just the same and see how much things change, if any, when training camp gets underway in Latrobe in late July.
