The Pittsburgh Steelers drafted Broderick Jones to be their left tackle of the future. That was never a surprise to anybody. Current LT Dan Moore Jr. knew it right away. He spent months talking about how he was embracing for the challenge to his job, and of his willingness to play right tackle if he needed to.
The only thing is, when it came down to it in the long run, Jones took not his job but that of Chukwuma Okorafor, who now regrets signing an extension with the team two years ago after finding himself benched. This in spite of the fact that Jones had very little prior experience playing on the right side.
“It really wasn’t that bad”, he told Tim Benz of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “With the offseason coming up, me being able to get practice in, just continue to get that repetition right. Getting used to it, you never know what can happen next season. That’s going to be big for me”.
For what it’s worth, although Jones previously had minimal playing experience at right tackle, he did say after he was drafted that he frequently practiced there at Georgia. He also said that he was open to starting on either side—not that he doesn’t have a preference.
“Being in my natural position is always ideal”, he admitted, via Benz, but he added that playing on the right side “doesn’t hurt anything”. As if he had any other choice, he left it up to the team to decide where he goes from here. “I just want to be prepared wherever they need me”.
Jones’ first career start did come at left tackle, stepping in against the Baltimore Ravens back in Week Five when Moore was dealing with an injury. There was quite a bit of speculation, heading into the bye week at the time, that Jones would take over the starting job at that point.
Instead, he went back to the bench, only to start at right tackle a few games later. Okorafor insisted that he had been benched for disciplinary reasons, purportedly saying something he shouldn’t have during the loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars a week earlier, but he never returned to the starting lineup.
While Jones played reasonably well at right tackle throughout the season, he also very much looked like a rookie. His struggles in pass protection in particular were evident. He gave up the Steelers’ lone sack in their Wild-Card Round loss to the Buffalo Bills, losing as he so often had against an inside move, in this case to Greg Rousseau.
The Steelers might want to heed a word of caution about position flexibility after trading away G Kevin Dotson. Deeming him expendable after Dotson struggled to settle in at left guard the past couple seasons, he rediscovered his game at right guard with the Los Angeles Rams and credited the switch back to his natural spot as a key reason.
Chances are very high that Jones would excel at a higher level playing at left tackle, where the Steelers drafted him to play in the first place. If they don’t move him there, it may prove to be a very big mistake. And it would only look worse if the reason they don’t do it is because Moore is just that much worse at right tackle. If that’s the case, then you go find another right tackle.
