While rookie OT Broderick Jones’ future as a starter is a given, sooner or later, the timeline has increasingly shifted toward later since training camp opened. The imposing Georgia product did not blow the doors off the competition, but rather started off slow and has gradually built himself up since then.
While he contributed to allowing a sack in Saturday night’s game, it was a step forward for the 14th-overall draft pick, now having logged nearly 100 preseason snaps over the past two weeks.
“I do feel a little bit better. There’s always things to work on, that you can improve on, so it’s just time to get back in the lab and continue to correct little mistakes”, he told reporters after the game, via the team’s website, following his second outing.
“I take every rep as seriously as possible because you never know when it can be your last”, he added. “I like to have the most reps because as a rookie coming in always, always got to prove themselves, I feel like the more reps I get, the better chance I have to do that”.
It is wise to bear Jones’ youth and inexperience in mind. He comes into the league with just 19 collegiate starts. Even if two of them came in national championship victories, that’s still not a lot of reps in the grand scheme of things.
Not for somebody you expect to see 12,000-plus snaps over the life of his NFL career, which is unquestionably what the Steelers had in mind when they traded up to draft him in April, giving up a fourth-round pick to do so.
Former Steelers starting left tackle Max Starks had his own journey to go through before he settled in his role. While Jones should not need the same sort of timeline as Starks, the retired lineman urged patience in dealing with the rookie, describing his process as incremental. “He’s in an oven, not a microwave”.
At 6-foot-5, 311 pounds, with strong athletic traits, he has all the building blocks of a franchise left tackle. It’s a matter of assembling it, and that’s what the coaching staff is working on right now—very much in conjunction with him. He has been very active and engaged in the process of getting himself better. That’s not as obvious as it might sound.
The Steelers may have big things planned for him in the future, but they don’t need him right now. Third-year Dan Moore Jr. has been holding things down on his end, unquestionably putting in his best offseason. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette beat writer Ray Fittipaldo recently named him the team’s most improved player from a year ago.
The Steelers have gotten nearly 100 snaps under Jones’ belt so far, with plenty more to come. Even if he does not begin the season in the starting lineup, I fully anticipate that he will be used as a sixth lineman in select situations. It’s the way they’ve broken in young linemen for years, and they haven’t had a more important project in a long time.
