For a second year under GM Omar Khan, the draft media is loving what the Pittsburgh Steelers are cooking up. Reacting to the team drafting West Virginia C Zach Frazier, doubling up on o-line after taking Washington OT Troy Fautanu in Round 1, NFL Network’s Lance Zierlein sees exactly what the organization is doing.
“You got Fautanu at left tackle…and you’ve got Zach Frazier,” Zierlein said Friday. “We’re bringing nasty back to Pittsburgh.”
Pittsburgh has made critical investments along the offensive line in both drafts under Khan. In 2023, the team traded up for Georgia OT Broderick Jones in the first round. This year, they selected back-to-back offensive linemen for only the second time in history and their back-to-back first-round picks mark the first time the Steelers have ever done so.
The Steelers had a clear need at center. And once again, the board broke in Pittsburgh’s favor, the Steelers able to hold at the 51st spot and still get one of the top three centers in this year’s class. Frazier is coming off a broken leg, but his rehab seems to be going well. Assuming he’s healthy, he should be the odds-on favorite to start Week 1.
Lance Zierlein provided a scouting report on what the Steelers are getting.
“Zach Frazier is big and physical. But more importantly, he’s a special leverage player,” Zierlein said. “Anytime you talk to o-line coaches, you tell them a player was a wrestler and a good wrestler in high school, oh they perk up. They perk up. Because they understand leverage. They have good core strength. They understand leverage. So rarely are they going to be pushed around. They have the type of power to neutralize the bigger players.”
Frazier was a star high school wrestler, a four-time state champ in the heavyweight division. He left school with a career 159-2 record, his only losses a 1-0 defeat as a freshman and another after he was leading 8-0 in a match but called for an illegal move and disqualified. Speaking with o-line expert Brandon Thorn earlier this offseason, Frazier credited his wrestling background for helping him on the football field, once saying previously he only kept wrestling because it improved his technique on the gridiron.
“Knowing how I can use leverage to shift my weight to move him,” Frazier told Thorn. “It’s kinda hard to explain but being able to torque people…it’s helped me out a lot.”
Under new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith, who loves running the ball and was fired up about the Steelers picks, Pittsburgh could have one of the NFL’s best rushing attacks in 2024. While the Steelers are looking to improve their passing game, their identity hasn’t changed one bit. They just should be more effective executing out of the gate.
