All signs point toward the Pittsburgh Steelers getting their entire starting offensive line back to full health this week—including Dan Moore Jr. set to start at left tackle. Much to the chagrin of most fans, the third-year veteran appears set to resume his place in the starting lineup over rookie Broderick Jones.
The latter is the Steelers’ first-round draft pick, for whom they traded up to 14 in order to acquire. He made his first career start just before the bye week, playing well against the Baltimore Ravens in a winning effort. Moore was out due to a knee injury but seems ready to return after missing one game and enjoying the benefits of time off during the bye week.
Yet the plan all along has been for Jones to be the starting left tackle of the future, and he played well. So why isn’t the future now? Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk isn’t listening to the outside commentary, instead trusting that the Steelers know what they’re seeing and making informed decisions based on that.
“You can do one of two things if somebody isn’t developing the way that you would have hoped”, he said on 93.7 The Fan this week with Andrew Fillipponi and Chris Mueller. “You can double down and keep doing what you’ve been doing and hope it gets better, or you can say, ‘You know what, we’re gonna make the changes we need to make in the best interests of the team, and if that impacts his development in a negative way, if it’s a slap in the face, whatever, we’re trying to win football games, and we’re putting our best 11 out there’”.
Fans will argue that returning Moore to the lineup, however, is not in the best interests of the mission of winning football games, nor is it putting their best 11 on the field. But we can reasonably assume that the Steelers would not be doing so if they didn’t believe it to be the case. And neither he nor Florio puts much stock in outside analytics like Pro Football Focus grades, which rated Jones well and has Moore as one of the very worst linemen in football.
“Listen, I don’t put any stock into somebody that I don’t know who they are, watching the game on TV and applying grades to a guy where they don’t know what his assignment is on a given play”, Florio said. “That whole thing is so flawed, especially for offensive line play. I give it no credence whatsoever. None whatsoever. The team knows what’s going on and the team’s making decisions on what’s in the best interests of the franchise”.
As most of you likely know, fan bases have a love-hate relationship with outlets like Pro Football Focus. They have inherent limitations, some of which Florio pointed out legitimately, but by and large, fans tend to like what they say when it agrees with their views and dislike their commentary when it doesn’t.
Nevertheless, you’d be hard-pressed to find many people in Pittsburgh who believe that starting Moore over Jones entering the seventh week of the regular season puts the Steelers in a better position to win their next game and the games to come. Even if that seems to be what the coaching staff believes.
