If you had to go through the Pittsburgh Steelers’ current roster and circle the weaker starters at their respective positions on the team, you’d likely pick out LT Dan Moore Jr. as one of those guys. Josh Carney of Steelers Depot ranked Moore second to last in the Ranking The Starters series he did this summer, suggesting that Moore was coming into training camp on thin ice after Pittsburgh drafted OT Broderick Jones in the first round this year as his potential replacement.
Moore managed to have a strong training camp and preseason, winning the starting left tackle job outright. However, the first three weeks of the seasons have been a bit rocky for Moore, Pro Football Focus grading him as the worst offensive tackle in football in Week One after a bad performance against the San Francisco 49ers. He finished second to last the next week against the Cleveland Browns in PFF grading for offensive tackles.
Alex Kozora of Steelers Depot conducted a film room on Moore’s performance against the Browns and All-Pro DE Myles Garrett, depicting how Moore didn’t give up a sack, but how Garrett still proved to be disruptive and made life hard on QB Kenny Pickett. Former Steelers OT Max Starks recently appeared as a guest on the North Shore Drive Podcast with host Christopher Carter and was asked about Moore’s play this season. Starks defended Moore, stating that the young offensive tackle is still improving and has done what he needed to do to get the job done the last couple of weeks.
“I mean, Dan Moore at the end of last year was progressing,” Starks said on the North Shore Drive Podcast, which aired on Post-Gazette Sports’ YouTube Channel. “This year, he’s still progressing. I mean, for as bad as people want to make it and give him this bad PPF score, how many sacks did Myles Garrett have? None, and this guy’s on-track to have a record for the Browns in sacks. So, but people are like ‘Oh it didn’t look good.’ Nobody cares about looks. This isn’t college football. Results matter. He didn’t have a sack on the scorecard. Clean sheet. That’s what I worry about.”
At the end of 2022, you did see that Moore was progressing, generating a better push in the run game as well as being more consistent in pass protection. He wasn’t playing like a Pro Bowler by any standard, but he was showing growth from the turbulent start to his career, being thrown into the fire as a fourth-round rookie who projected to be the swing tackle behind starters Chukwuma Okorafor and Zach Banner before Banner landed on IR prior to the start of the season.
Based on what we’ve seen thus far, it’s fair to question if Moore will ever become more than an above-average starter in the league. Still, Starks does make a good point that Moore is progressing based on where he started the season. He set a pretty low bar in Week One in San Francisco, but he didn’t allow a sack to Garrett in week Two and was clean from a sack perspective in Week Three against Las Vegas. With that gauntlet of pass rushers now behind him, perhaps we will see Moore start to play better with the Texans, Ravens, and Rams up next, hopefully allowing him to get into a better groove as the season continues to unfold.
