All indications seem to point toward rookie OT Broderick Jones entering the starting lineup on a full-time basis. The Pittsburgh Steelers’ first-round draft pick is now listed as co-starter at right tackle along with Chukwuma Okorafor, the incumbent, who himself said that he expects Jones to start Sunday against the visiting Green Bay Packers.
That was already the case last week, with Okorafor insisting that he was benched for disciplinary reasons after acting out toward the end of the loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. As of yet, nobody is willing to detail exactly what he said that was so heinous.
But it does seem like a convenient pretext to make a lineup change, especially one involving a likely permanent benching of an established veteran. Nobody on the roster has been with the team on offense longer than Okorafor, himself a 2018 third-round draft pick (along with QB Mason Rudolph).
Jones is the shiny new rookie, whom everybody viewed as the future franchise left tackle. For now, however, it seems that his immediate future is on the right, even if it ultimately flips to the left over the course of time. Not only did his installment in the lineup last week spark the offense, it energized his teammates as well.
“It was good. Broderick did a good job”, RB Najee Harris told reporters yesterday in assessing the rookie’s first game at right tackle, via the team’s website. He had previously made a start at left tackle in Week Four. “He had a hell of a game and we’re just excited that he’s out there”.
He is, or at least appears to be, the second rookie to ascend into a full-time starting position after second-round CB Joey Porter Jr. recently made the same transition, bypassing veteran Levi Wallace on the depth chart.
While he has not allowed much pressure in pass protection across two-plus games of action, Jones’s work as a run blocker has been most notable. The Steelers have been eager to showcase his mobility, sending him out into space on multiple occasions, either on pull or reach blocks or getting out in front of screen passes.
That sort of mobility from the tackle position can really help add another dimension to the offense, something that the Steelers simply couldn’t get out of Okorafor or LT Dan Moore Jr. It was one of the traits that made him a high first-round pick to begin with.
Although he still has some considerable growing ahead of him before he reaches his full potential, Jones has already proven his potential. He has displayed a base level of play that the coaching staff now seems to acknowledge is sufficient to take upon a full-time starting role, growing pains be damned. I think it would be hard to walk back from that at this point.
