The Pittsburgh Steelers view rookie Troy Fautanu as their starting right tackle now—yet Broderick Jones is still practicing there. Something doesn’t quite add up, even if Fautanu is currently missing time due to injury. It was Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette who reported on the Steelers’ view of Fautanu, yet his colleague, Brian Batko, sounds less sure.
“I do wonder if the Steelers are maybe trying to frame things as, ‘Hey, one bad performance with a minor injury doesn’t mean this guy’s gonna be a bust. Everybody pump the brakes’”, Batko said about Dulac’s report regarding Fautanu on 93.7 The Fan on Tuesday. He suggested that the truth might be somewhere in the middle—somewhat discrediting Dulac’s report. “He doesn’t have much experience at that right tackle, so I’m very much staying tuned on this one. Plans can change”.
On Broderick Jones, Batko noted that the second-year player has a very nonchalant attitude about his situation with the media. “‘I don’t care as long as I’m on the field. Left, right, I can do both. It’s fine. It’s whatever’”, he paraphrased Jones as saying. “I’m guessing he probably tells the coaches the same thing”.
I’m not quite sure I entirely agree with that description. While Jones certainly has a jovial personality, my sense from recent interviews is that there is some frustration. I suspect that he really does want to move to left tackle, and to get it over with. At this point in his career, he knows he is going to play regardless, so it’s not about job security. I do think Batko has a point about the Steelers’ view of Broderick Jones, however. Yet it is, again, one that I’m not sure I agree with, myself, perhaps overly confident in the young man.
“They’re not so much worried about, ‘Oh, he needs to get comfortable at left or at right’”, Batko said of Jones. “They truly think he can do it on either side and the other spot will play out as it does. You can argue whether that’s the right thing for a young guy or not, but he seems to have the right mentality about all of it”.
Yes, Broderick Jones’ background is left tackle, but even at the college level, he didn’t have a ton of experience. He couldn’t beat out Dan Moore Jr. there for the starting job as a rookie, and then he moved to right tackle. So far this offseason, he has taken limited snaps on the left side, despite that being his intended position.
I argued yesterday that if the Steelers have truly decided Troy Fautanu is ready to start, then they also need to make the decision to move Broderick Jones to left tackle on a permanent basis. Maybe I’m the wrong one and he really doesn’t need that work. Perhaps he is one of those rare players who can seamlessly switch sides due to his natural gifts and instincts. But he has under 100 career snaps at left tackle, so how long are you going to wait? It’s like a game of Chicken rather than an actual strategy, if they indeed view Fautanu as the right-side starter.
