The Pittsburgh Steelers have a long history of excellent play at the center position, but is that history contaminating their perception of what is required there? That’s the conundrum draft expert Matt Williamson raised recently. In conversation with Tim Benz on the Breakfast with Benz podcast, he made the argument for going tackle over center.
“Pittsburghers think having a [Maurkice] Pouncey, Dermontti Dawson, [Mike] Webster [at] center is like their God-given right”, Williamson said. “It’s wonderful to have a phenomenal center. But Steelers fans don’t know this, because they’ve never had phenomenal tackles because they’ve always picked too late in the round to get these studs. It’s a lot better to have bookend tackles that are superstars”.
The Steelers rarely draft in the top half of the first round, which is where the top four to five tackles tend to go. Last year is a perfect example: they sat at 17 and traded up three spots to get Broderick Jones. This year is a particularly deep top-end tackle class, however, and Williamson believes they must exploit the opportunity presented.
“In this draft class, I think the center position’s really intriguing, in that there are three guys that fit your bill to me of ‘He’s the guy’. But then I can probably give you six others that are gonna be fourth-round picks and probably will start in this league a long time”, he said. “And if you look at the 32 teams in the league, that’s mostly what people are playing with at the center position right now. So I would rather go big at tackle, settle at center, and go from there”.
The counterargument is that the Steelers don’t currently have a starter-worthy center on the roster at all. They at least have Dan Moore Jr., who has three years of starting experience, to play tackle. But right now Nate Herbig is their projected starting center, and he has about 50 snaps of center experience. He has much more experience playing guard, but they have had enough problems with bad snaps.
But you’re more likely to find a better center after the first round than you are a tackle. Few centers even go in the first round, yet there is talk of up to three going this year. That includes Graham Barton, who has primarily played tackle but has also been evaluated at guard. Many are now mentioning him as the top center of the class, however. He hasn’t played the position in years.
Hard as it is to believe, you can still draft a center with starter potential after Jackson Powers-Johnson. And between an elite tackle and an elite center, isn’t the choice obvious? As long as your center can snap the ball, Williamson suggests, the Steelers can hide him.
The center is frequently more of a “helper” position in the blocking scheme. They often find themselves looking for work, assisting one of the guards. The Steelers asked more of, say, Maurkice Pouncey, than they might of Sedrick Van Pran-Granger, but if the alternative is having a JC Latham or Amarius Mims at right tackle, that’s a fair trade-off.
