It’s been no secret that the Pittsburgh Steelers want to upgrade their offensive line. Their moves throughout free agency have shown this with them upgrading the interior of the offensive line. The next task will be the tackles, and one tackle who may be donning the Black and Gold after the NFL Draft in April is Ohio State tackle Dawand Jones.
Jones is a mountain of a man, standing 6’8″ and weighing 375 pounds, and had dinner Tuesday night with head coach Mike Tomlin and other members of the Steelers organization, including general manager Omar Khan.
Today at his Pro Pay, Jones was interviewed and asked about how the dinner with Tomlin went.
“It went well,” Jones said courtesy of Bucknuts 247 Sports. “He really connected with me. Good guy, Mike really connects with the guys. Everybody else was there and the GM, they made sure we felt taken care of.”
Though the dinner went well, Jones had a quiet Pro Day. He reportedly did not go through drills and didn’t even weigh-in, leading Tomlin to “chirp” him about it.
“He just said, ‘you’re too good to weigh-in,'” Jones said.
Jones did not explain why he opted against weighing in.
“No reason,” he said. “Just didn’t need to.”
Jones weighed in at February’s Senior Bowl, tipping the scales at 375 pounds. It makes him one of the largest players in this year’s draft. He could go in the first round or easily second where he could fall to Pittsburgh as 32. It remains a question of where he will fall, but he certainly will fit on many teams given his play. This past season Jones, only 21,, was named a second-team All-American by the Associated Press and received a PFF grade of 82.1.
Jones also talked about how he found Tomlin funny at the dinner and that they do have some differing of opinions on some things such as food.
“Yeah we got a lot of similarities, he’s funny,” Jones said. “He had oysters yesterday, I didn’t want them, he just forced me to eat them but I didn’t eat it. We got a couple differences, whether it’s food or not.”
Jones played mostly right tackle at Ohio State, not logging any snaps at left tackle since 2020. While it is not the worst thing in the world and a transition could be made, it is just something to note if Pittsburgh is trying to upgrade left tackle before right tackle and doesn’t want to move a player from right to left.
