The Pittsburgh Steelers made it a point of emphasis to improve their offensive line during the 2024 NFL Draft, taking OT Troy Fautanu in the first round, C Zach Frazier in the second round and OG Mason McCormick in the fourth round. Fautanu and Frazier have a lot of collegiate experience and are both thought to potentially be Day 1 starters, but The Athletic’s Mark Kaboly believes that OT Dan Moore Jr., who’s started 49 games over the last three seasons at left tackle, could start ahead of Fautanu.
During an appearance on The Joe Starkey Show on 93.7 The Fan on Wednesday, Kaboly said it’s “quite possible” Moore starts over the rookie.
“It happened last year. Why wouldn’t it happen again this year?” Kaboly said. “There would have to be a lot of issues with how Fautanu plays and how he’s acclimated, and if they go into this training camp and come out of the training camp and Dan Moore is obviously better than him, like you saw pretty significantly last year with him and Broderick Jones, at least early in the process, I mean, why not? I think that they would allow that.”
Last year, Moore beat out Broderick Jones for the starting left tackle job, but according to Kaboly, Jones will start at left tackle while Fautanu and Moore compete for the right tackle job. For a number of reasons, it would be much more surprising if Moore won the job this year. For one, he’s struggled when put at right tackle, and his NFL experience, save for four snaps, is entirely at that position. So if Jones really is locked in at left tackle, it would be a surprise if Moore beat out Fautanu on the right side.
Of course, the team could always flip Jones back to the right side, but it wouldn’t make sense to do so if he starts camp working on the left side, which is where GM Omar Khan and the team want him. The other thing to consider is that Fautanu is coming in with much more collegiate experience than Jones had. Fautanu logged 2,143 collegiate snaps over three seasons, and he played in 28 games the last two seasons. Coming out of Georgia, Jones had 1,396 snaps over three seasons.
Fautanu being more experienced means the Steelers might be more comfortable throwing him into the fire immediately, whereas they were more cautious with Jones, especially after Moore had a good training camp. While the fact that Moore started last year over a rookie tackle does set a precedent, the situations are different enough where it would feel much more surprising if he did start this year, especially with Kaboly’s report that he’ll compete with Fautanu for the right tackle job.
Training camp is just under a month away, and we’ll have much more clarity when players actually suit up and start to hit each other in Latrobe. But for now, I’m not putting too much stock in the idea of Moore potentially starting, especially on the right side.
