With the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2022 season over, the team finishing above .500 but failing to make the postseason, we have turned our attention to the offseason. One thing that it means is that some stock evaluations are going to start taking on broader contexts, reflecting on a player’s development, either positively or negatively, over the course of the season. Other evaluations will reflect only one immediate event or trend. The nature of the evaluation, whether short-term or long-term, will be noted in the reasoning section below.
Player: LT Dan Moore Jr.
Stock Value: Down
Reasoning: The Steelers traded up in the first round to draft Georgia offensive tackle Broderick Jones, who is expected to be their left tackle of the future. He should be in competition to start right away at the spot where Dan Moore Jr. is the two-year incumbent starter, having played every snap of his career as such.
It can’t feel good when your team trades up in the first round to draft a player who is projected to play the same position you play. That’s the boat third-year veteran Dan Moore Jr. is currently in, having been a full-time starter at left tackle since coming out of Texas A&M as a 2021 fourth-round pick.
The Steelers traded up from 17 to 14 in order to select Georgia tackle Broderick Jones. Although he is somewhat inexperienced with only one full season of collegiate starts under his belt, he may have the highest upside of all tackles in his draft class.
The only question is whether the Steelers believe, by the beginning of the regular season, that he will be at a level sufficient enough to thrust him into the starting lineup. You don’t take a player in the top half of the first round and fail to at least give him a chance to start to see if he can grow into it.
But Moore will have the opportunity to try to hold him off. I imagine the Steelers will begin the offseason program with him working with the ones as the primary option, while gradually rotating Jones into the mix.
What will be interesting to see is how many snaps at right tackle they might give Jones. While he hasn’t really played that spot in games, he said that he worked at right tackle during every practice at Georgia. And whoever loses the starting tackle job is going to have to be the swing tackle.
Equally interesting, then, will be seeing what kind of work the Steelers give Moore at right tackle. He was left side-only player in college. They were working with him on the right side during his rookie offseason to try to prepare him for the swing tackle role, but injury thrust him into the starting lineup. They even made adjustments to their plans to accommodate him and allow him to play on the left side.
