Now that the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2023 season is getting underway after the team finished above .500 but failing to make the postseason last year, we turn our attention to the next chapter of Steelers football and everything that entails. One thing that it means is that some stock evaluations are going to start taking on more specific contexts as we get into the season, reflecting more immediate plusses and minus rather than trends over long periods. The nature of the evaluation, whether short-term or long-term, will be noted in the reasoning section below.
Player: OL Dylan Cook
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: With the news of G Kevin Dotson’s trade, the path for first-year OL Dylan Cook to make the 53-man roster just got a lot clearer. After working his way up the depth chart throughout camp, he now seems to have a pretty good chance of actually making the team, barring an outside addition.
Looking at the Steelers’ current roster, there are basically four players reasonably in the mix for the final two roster spots—maybe five. There’s veteran T Le’Raven Clark, rookie Spencer Anderson, who plays all five positions, C/G Ryan McCollum, C/G Kendrick Green, and T/G Dylan Cook.
In the wake of the Kevin Dotson trade, I’m picking Anderson and Cook as my eighth and ninth linemen. Anderson probably has the stronger odds given his flexibility, which includes center, and his draft status, even if he was just a seventh rounder.
However, Cook could very well now lay claim to the final roster spot. A former college quarterback who converted to the offensive line at Montana where he made 23 starts, he played tackle exclusively, and almost exclusively right tackle.
Since arriving in Pittsburgh in May, he has expanded his portfolio, working at left guard late in camp due to injuries and then playing there in the preseason finale. The more important point, of course, is the fact that he played pretty well, holding his own and showing consistent improvement. Alex Kozora particularly noted the fluidity of motion in his lower half in mirroring defenders.
While he might be a gameday inactive to begin his career, he has a realistic shot of making the team over Clark and Green. Even though Green started the preseason finale at right guard due to injury (a spot at which Cook did not practice, yet), I have a hard time seeing the Steelers keeping him at this rate.
At the very worst, Cook will be a priority to retain on the practice squad, a player that the Steelers may even be willing to pay a roster-level salary just to keep. They have done that very occasionally in the past when they were worried about losing out on a player they didn’t quite have a spot for but whom they wanted to continue to develop.
