While a great deal of emphasis for the Pittsburgh Steelers this offseason has been about creating competition, it isn’t always man versus man. For head coach Mike Tomlin, it’s equally about man versus himself, particularly with regard to third-year OT Dan Moore Jr., at whose position the team invested a first-round draft pick in April in the form of Broderick Jones.
“It’s not about him holding off anyone”, Tomlin told reporters yesterday when asked about how Moore has managed to hold off Jones in the battle for the starting left tackle job, via the team’s website. “It’s about his relationship with his game and where he is in his career”.
“I think it’s reasonable to expect him to be on the trajectory that he’s on”, he continued. “We’re talking about a guy that’s played 1,000 snaps two years in a row. There’s no substitute for that snap experience and what you’re seeing is probably the fruit of that growth process”.
A fourth-round pick in 2021, Moore has started every game of his career up to this point. The Texas A&M product has been widely praised this offseason for taking his game to another level, which could just as easily be attributed to natural growth and development as a third-year veteran as it can to the pressure of a competition for his job.
While he missed one game due to injury in his rookie season, Moore has been extremely available. He played every snap a year ago and has logged 2,240 total snaps in regular-season play in the first two years of his career.
The Steelers have mixed Jones in with the first-team unit for select practice sessions going back to OTAs, but Moore has consistently worked with the starters. Nearly all of that has been at left tackle, but when Jones has worked there with the starters, Moore has been on the field at right tackle.
“I think he’s had a really good camp. I think he’s playing very well”, offensive coordinator Matt Canada said of Moore, via the team’s website. “Dan got thrown in as a rookie himself and had to do a lot of growing up in front of everybody. I think he’s continuing to grow and work really hard. His technique’s really, really good. I’m happy with where he’s at”.
Though just a mid-round draft pick without noted pedigree or elite athletic traits, he had two key elements in his resume: experience, and experience against a high level of competition. He started 37 games at an SEC school, almost double the amount of starts Jones had at Georgia.
Jones is going to be the starting left tackle of this team at some point, sooner or later. It’s exceedingly unlikely, as we sit here today, that it will be in the opener, or even in the first few weeks of the season. If Moore plays well, there’s really no reason that he should be pulled at all, so he is in the driver’s seat.
