CBS Sports’ Peter Prisco likes – but doesn’t love – the Pittsburgh Steelers selecting Washington OT Troy Fautanu with the 20th pick of the 2024 NFL Draft. Reacting to the selection, Prisco gave the Steelers a ‘B’ grade for the pick.
“I gave it a ‘B.’ And this is a perfect Pittsburgh Steelers pick,” Prisco said during CBS Sports’ draft coverage. “A tough, physical, nasty guy on the offensive line who’s good at run blocking and also can pass protect. Remember, they drafted Broderick Jones last year. He’s one of their tackles. Now this guy might be able to be the other one for the long run. I like it. I gave it a B.”
With Fautanu viewed as a top-15 talent, it’s a strong value pick for the Steelers to snag him at No. 20. The board broke well for Pittsburgh as six quarterbacks went in the top 12 picks. And though offense predictably dominated the top 20 selections, there wasn’t the giant run on offensive linemen some predicted. Several went off the board, including Taliese Fuaga and Amarius Mims, but the Steelers were left with plenty of options. Duke’s Graham Barton was there along with Oklahoma OT Tyler Guyton and, of course, Fautanu.
Though he didn’t give it a grade, former GM Rick Spielman liked the Steelers making Fautanu their newest player.
“He’ll be one of their best five offensive lineman as they try to sort this out,” Spielman said. “He can play guard, he can play center, he can play tackle. So it’d be interesting where they line him up. But this was a great pick for the Pittsburgh Steelers.”
Spielman said Fautanu was a better prospect than Barton, who went several picks later to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In their post-draft press conference, Mike Tomlin and the Steelers confirmed they view Fautanu as a tackle. Though many draftniks highlighted his versatility, or potential versatility (Fautanu primarily played LT in college along with a bit of LG), Pittsburgh isn’t having the vision of moving him around its line at different spots.
The biggest question is whether he’ll play on the left side or right, the Steelers needing to sort out whether they want Broderick Jones to remain at right tackle or go back to left. For them, that might be the hardest part of the pick they had to make. To hear them tell it, everything else about Fautanu was easy to evaluate.
