The Steelers are now back at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, facing down a long regular season that looks a lot more promising given how things have gone leading up to it. Finishing just above .500 last year, they anticipate being able to compete with any team in the league this season with second-year QB Kenny Pickett leading the way.
They’ve done a great deal to address what they identified as their shortcomings during the offseason, which included addressing the offensive and defensive lines as well as the secondary and the inside linebacker room, which is nearly entirely different from last year. The results have been positive so far.
Even well into the regular season and beyond, there are going to be plenty of questions that need answered. When will the core rookies get to play, or even start? Is the depth sufficient where they upgraded? Can they stand toe-to-toe with the Bengals and the other top teams in the league? We’ll try to frame the conversation in relevant ways as long as you stick with us throughout the season, as we have for many years.
Question: Is Broderick Jones’ co-starter status a mere gesture of respect to Chukwuma Okorafor?
Fun fact: Chukwuma Okorafor never really ‘won’ a starting job. He lost out to Matt Feiler in 2019, and then to Zach Banner in 2020. Banner’s season-opening knee injury sort of left him in that starting job by default since then, and the team never really bothered to challenge him.
But for the first time since inheriting the position, Okorafor spent a game for which he was healthy on the bench last week. And now this week, he’s listed as a “co-starter” alongside rookie Broderick Jones, the first-round pick who took his place this past Thursday and whom many observers agree looked better than the incumbent.
That certainly raises the question of how seriously to take the “co-starter” designation. Are they really going to compete during the week to decide who is going to start the game? Or is this just part of the transition to soothe the ego of the veteran who is losing his starting job?
Everybody assumed that Jones would be starting at left tackle and taking over Dan Moore Jr.’s spot. I imagine that’s what Okorafor thought, as well. After all, Jones was basically a left tackle with minimal experience on the right side—a few dozen snaps or so.
But now that he has shown that he can play on the right side I question how head coach Mike Tomlin could possibly put him back on the bench. The fact that Jones is listed as co-starter means a lot. The only question is how quickly they drop the co-.
Chemistry along the offensive line is critical, so I would imagine that once they make the flip, they’re going to stick with it barring a significant drop in performance. We’ve seen his “growing pains” now across two games and two sides of the offense. I think it’s well within the margins of tolerability.
