Steelers Now
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers are moving Broderick Jones to left tackle for the 2025 season, and Jones seems pretty happy about that.
Jones, the team’s first-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, never complained about spending his first two seasons at right tackle, and steadfastly refused to blame his struggles over those season on him playing a new positions.
But it’s always been clear that Jones wanted to be on the left side. He also said on Wednesday that it feels more natural for him to play there.
“It does,” Jones said. “When they initially moved me to right tackle and then I played there for so long and then they tried to make me like the swing tackle, it was kinda funky. But, I knew I would be going back to left.”
It’s good to be comfortable, certainly. And there are instances when a player’s comfort should matter. But when it comes to whether Jones will work out for the Steelers, the switch from right to left is not going to be some kind of magic bullet that solves all his problems.
Through two seasons, Jones has struggled in pass protection — an area that was obviously not his strength coming out of Georgia. He allowed 11 sacks last season, according to charting by Pro Football Focus, and while you can certainly quibble with their methodology, that’s an alarming number.
They certainly weren’t all — and maybe not any — due to a lack of comfort or confidence in playing right tackle.
The only player that had more sacks assigned to him last year by PFF? Steelers left tackle Dan Moore Jr.
Moore was the reason that Jones was playing on the right and is also an illustrative example of how the position move can’t be the be-all, end-all for Jones.
Moore was a fourth-round pick by the Steelers in 2021, and the plan was for him to be a developmental player and a swing tackle. As a backup, he’d have plenty of time to adjust to playing some right tackle in addition to the left tackle he’d played at Texas A&M.
But when Zach Banner couldn’t recover from his knee injury and Moore had to be inserted into the starting lineup immediately — in what was Ben Roethlisberger’s final season with the team. They didn’t have the luxury of giving him time to adjust to a new spot. So they rolled with Moore at left tackle.
The results were uninspiring, so uninspiring that the Steelers used consecutive first-round picks on tackles to be assured of being able to replace Moore before he hit free agency this offseason.
Moore wasn’t given time to learn a new position in 2021 because the Steelers were still in win-now mode with Big Ben. By the end of his time in Pittsburgh, there was no point. He was on his way out the door.
Moore could have — and probably should have — learned right tackle. He might still be in Pittsburgh...
