Following suit with many mock drafts over the last month or two, a panel of CBS Sports analysts including former NFL GM Rick Spielman and former Steelers CB Bryant McFadden have the Pittsburgh Steelers selecting Georgia OT Amarius Mims in the first round.
“McFadden’s former team selects an offensive tackle from Georgia for the second straight year,” wrote Kyle Stackpole in a post on CBS Sports.
Mims has “planet theory” size, as in there are only so many people on the planet with his frame. At 6076, 340 pounds, with 36 1/8-inch arms, he has prototypical size to be an offensive tackle in the NFL. The knock on him is that he only had eight starts at Georgia. That school is always loaded with talent, so sometimes prospects have to wait their turn on the bench for multiple years. Just last year, the Steelers selected Broderick Jones from Georgia. He only had 19 starts in college.
The positive part is that Mims is just 21 years old, so he will continue to get better as a player. With his experience, would he be able to immediately supplant Dan Moore Jr.? He would be playing on the right side with Jones flipping back to the left, but he would have to prove he can be an upgrade over Moore for that to occur. Jones wasn’t able to do that in Week 1 of last season, for what it is worth.
Beyond their pick of Mims to the Steelers, which has become the default for many mock drafts at this point, the way their board fell is more interesting. The first four picks were all quarterbacks before a run on the top wide receivers and edge rushers. By the time the Steelers were up, Olumuyiwa Fashanu, Joe Alt, Taliese Fuaga, and JC Latham were off the board at tackle, and C Jackson Powers-Johnson went to the Seattle Seahawks at pick 16.
If that is the way the board falls, it will present an interesting dilemma for the Steelers. There are only two, maybe three more viable centers that can step in and start as a rookie. If they select Mims, they would be banking on one of those centers falling 31 more picks to their second-round selection at 51 overall. This mock draft scenario might lend itself to the Steelers trading up higher into the second round if things get tight and one of Zach Frazier or Graham Barton goes off the board early in the second round.
I recently went through all the center-needy teams and looked at the history of the center position in the early rounds of the draft, and this exact scenario is something that worries me.
Mims would be an exciting addition to the roster, no doubt, but it is also one of the deeper positions in the draft this year while other pressing needs on the team have less depth.
