Broderick Jones cleared to play

Dotson moved over to LG in 2021. That was the Trai Turner year. DeCastro's ankle gave up, they released him and signed Turner a few days later. Turner had never played LG or any position other than RG in the NFL. And, Feiler had just left for the Chargers.

So their options were basically:

• Move 5x Pro Bowler Trai Turner to LG for the first time in his career
• Keep Turner at RG and give promising young guy Dotson a chance to start at LG

If Dotson didn't start at LG that year, the boards would have lit up about him wasting away on the bench given how he played in 2020 when DeCastro went down.

And if DeCastro was around, same deal. Dotson was probably penciled in as the starter at LG in 2021 as early as November 2020...

Now in 2022 I suppose they could have put him back over at RG but the Daniels pieces were hashed out above. Plus they were bringing in Mason Cole as well after the Kendrick Green experiment failed. So keeping a young base of Dotson, Chuks, and Moore at stable spots going into 2022 made sense.

With the benefit of hindsight, re-signing Feiler in 2021 was the missed opportunity. But he hit FA and I doubt they were counting on DeCastro being done at that point.

But to play out the scenario, that means Dotson stays at RG, no Trai Turner, probably no James Daniels, maybe Seumalo still comes into the picture to follow up Feiler.

That whole OL deteriorated quick. Between 2020 and 2021 they had to replace Villy, Feiler, DeCastro, and Pouncey. And only Feiler was still playing at a reasonably high level. I think that DeCastro's injury really caught them off guard.

I think they made several reasonable decisions at the time in the moment. It still frustrates me that Colbert (or Tomlin I suppose, but it's not nice to talk about religion with friends) let the OL deteriorate twice like that on his watch. It's a minor miracle that they went to two Super Bowls given the state of the OL from 2008-2014.

 

A good chunk of the league runs outside zone. It's like any other football fad, once the defenses adjust they move to something else.
No OL expert but I've read it can take multiple seasons to get the outside zone scheme running smoothly. And that is with the same starting group, something the Steelers have lacked.

 

Its cool. I just figured I tell you before someone became a smarta$$ about it.
By the way , why don't you watch College football??