The Pittsburgh Steelers entered training camp with several significant position battles to figure out. People want to jump to making proclamations, but the reality is that none of them are determined yet—indeed, in most cases, there isn’t a clear favorite.
That includes the battle for the starting left tackle job, according to veteran DE Cameron Heyward, or at least not in the direction you might think. “I think everybody outside the Steelers is ready to anoint Broderick Jones to be the left tackle, but let’s slow our roll”, he said on his Not Just Football podcast about the team’s first-round pick.
The Steelers traded up three spots to take the big, athletic, but somewhat inexperienced tackle out of Georgia. He has been worked into the first-team offense throughout the offseason, but the growing pains have been there, and third-year incumbent Dan Moore Jr. has looked motivated.
“Dan Moore is coming to work every day and he’s trying to battle for the position. It’s not given if you’re just drafted number one. You’ve got to earn that position”, Heyward said. “Right now I think Dan has the leg up because he’s gotten that experience and he’s someone that’s continuing to grow. It’s not just, ‘Oh, I’m gonna lay down and let Broderick [take my job]”.
That’s been the general tone from inside the organization whenever anybody has commented on it. Even former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger went to bat for Moore, though he tends to support his own former linemen—and even has a tendency perhaps to not wish the rookies well right off the bat.
“We’ll see what happens. Broderick’s still taking his lumps”, Heyward offered, perhaps not without some motivation. “We had a couple battles in pass rush, but he’s getting his work. Man, you’ve got to go against Alex Highsmith, and then if you flip him on the right side you’ve got to go against T.J. You’ve got to have three capable tackles”.
Alex Kozora, our eyes and ears in training camp, described a series of one-on-one reps last week that pitted the rookie against the perennial Pro Bowler, and things went about as well as you might expect—if you weren’t expecting too much from the inexperienced tackle, that is.
But it’s all a part of the learning process for him, as Kozora pointed out. “For Jones, this was a great learning experience”, he wrote. “In one drill, over the course of less than five minutes, Jones went from facing a third-string rookie, to a veteran backup, to an elite and potential future Hall of Famer. That’s the beauty of camp. Jones worked up the ladder and though he might’ve fallen down a few rungs, it’ll make the climb back up all the sweeter”.
It’s all good preparation for what he’ll see whenever he does get into the starting lineup—especially if it comes early because the Steelers’ first few games on the schedule offer some steep challenges for even the best tackles in the game.
There won’t be many more open training camp practices after this, so we will have to rely on preseason performances from here on out for the most part to ascertain the progression Jones might be making. There is still time for him to win this thing off the bat. But if not, Moore will be ready, and he’ll have earned it.
