Could the Pittsburgh Steelers trade up for a tackle two years in a row if a first-round option like Taliese Fuaga slips in their range? Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburg Post-Gazette couldn’t help considering it on 93.7 The Fan on Thursday.
Fuaga showed up at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex a couple weeks back for a pre-draft visit. The Steelers also sent offensive line coach Pat Meyer to attend at his Oregon State Pro Day. The Steelers have obvious interest in him, but it’s not obvious he’ll be available at their draft slot.
“The Fuaga name is really intriguing to me”, Fittipaldo told Andrew Fillipponi and Chris Mueller. “You see him a lot around the fringe of the top 10, so we might be looking at another trade-up scenario if they want to go get him”.
He did mention a recent mock draft by Lance Zierlein that saw the Steelers staying put and landing Fuaga. Zierlein called him “the most technically sound pass protector in this draft on the offensive line”.
As Fittipaldo pointed out, this is a deep group of tackles this year, and Fuaga is one of the prospects fluctuating in rankings. Many draft analysts are struggling to rank these prospects, who exhibit different strengths and weaknesses.
The odds are good that teams’ rankings this year vary more than they usually do, which should make for some interesting moments during the draft. Teams are going to want to make sure that they secure their guys, so they’ll risk the move up.
And I could see Fuaga being the Steelers’ “guy”. I think they had Broderick Jones as their guy a year ago, at least among realistic options. And as you surely remember, they traded up from 17 to 14 in order to take him.
It’s possible that Fuaga lasts until the 20th pick, where the Steelers select this year. But he can just as easily find his new team at 15, if not sooner. A team may like him enough to take him in the top 10. You only need one team to like one player enough for those sorts of things to happen.
Of course, Fuaga isn’t the only tackle in the first round. The Steelers have frequently been paired with Georgia’s Amarius Mims, who is far less polished but has insane upside. They brought him in for a pre-draft visit as well, and they obviously have intel on him. Jones, George Pickens, and Darnell Washington all played with him at Alabama.
Right tackle is the favorite position for the Steelers to draft in the first round, but it’s not set in stone. Especially if the board breaks poorly for them, they could just as easily take a center like Jackson Powers-Johnson. Less likely but possible targets are wide receiver, defensive line, and cornerback—maybe even quarterback, just in case.
