It’s rarely easy in a locker room when a player gets traded, especially one who has been around the team for years. While his positional roommates understand the nature of the business and the circumstances surrounding the move, they know they’ll miss having fourth-year G Kevin Dotson around the meeting room.
They are equally sure that he will go on to have success. Now a member of the Los Angeles Rams following Sunday’s transaction, Dotson will go from fringe depth player in Pittsburgh to possible starter, while retaining his over $2.7 million base salary owed.
“Any way you look at it, he started a lot of games in this league”, fellow lineman Nate Herbig told Joe Rutter of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “I have a lot of respect for him as a player. I think he’s a starter in this league, so I’m happy he gets what he deserves”.
Herbig is one of the reasons Dotson became expendable. The Steelers signed him as a veteran free agent this offseason, and at the time it was assumed he would challenge the former fourth-round pick for the starting left guard job. Then Pittsburgh then signed Isaac Seumalo and shot that theory to hell.
While he spent the offseason competing, it was an uphill battle for Dotson. He seemed resigned to his fate all along, acknowledging that teams don’t sign players to $8 million-per-year contracts without intending to start them, as the Steelers did with Seumalo.
They also signed Herbig to a two-year deal averaging $4 million per year, another indication of his rank in the hierarchy. But Herbig also has the secret ingredient of position flexibility and is likely to open the season as the top backup guard as well as center. Dotson can only play guard.
As a result, he was going to be a guard-only reserve who wasn’t even the primary reserve guard, leaving his status on gameday in question. He could have been a healthy scratch here if he remained on the roster. Now in Los Angeles, he can challenge Tremayne Anchrum for the starting right guard job—if not right away, then at some point during the season.
“I’m happy for him,”, Herbig added, noting that he should “get an opportunity to play some football”. C Mason Cole also empathized as a player who had been traded before and came out successful on the other end. “He’s going to have a good career wherever he is”, he offered.
Even though he is with Los Angeles now, Dotson will be an unrestricted free agent in March. He already has 30 starts under his belt and could potentially add another 17 to that total before the year is through. Then he could survey the entirety of the open market, provided that the Rams don’t tag him—which may not be a bad thing.
A fan favorite when he first arrived, Dotson never really showed significant progress after displaying some early promise as a rookie. Most felt rather comfortable with him as the projected starting left guard going into the 2021 offseason, but times have certainly changed since then.
