The first round of the 2024 NFL Draft has been quite the ride. That wild ride worked out well for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Six Quarterbacks were selected in the top 12 picks, with one of those picks being made by the Falcons, who had recently signed Kirk Cousins to a $180 million.
The first 14 picks were all on the offensive side of the ball.
In spite of all of the picks on offense, the Steelers ended up landing an offensive player that wasn’t expected to be available at pick 20 before the draft began.
The Steelers used the 20th pick to draft former Washington right tackle Troy Fautanu.
A Perfect Fit for the Steelers
Entering the draft, no unit on the Steelers needed more help than their offensive line.
The team had no actual center on their roster. Meanwhile, Dan Moore Jr. had struggled at left tackle, allowing 55 pressures in 2023.
Broderick Jones, who the team drafted in round one last year, was playing out of position at right tackle.
Now Fautanu can take over on the right side, allowing Jones to move back to the left. He also has the versatility to play elsewhere on the line in the future depending on what the Steelers do in the future.
For the time being, he’ll occupy a position where he was stellar in college. He played right tackle throughout his career at Washington and only allowed 3 sacks and 35 pressures in more than 1300 pass block snaps, according to PFF.
His impressive play earned him All-Pac 12 Second Team honors in 2022 and First Team honors in 2023. He was also named the Pac-12’s best offensive lineman in 2023.
If his college dominance and the obvious need weren’t enough to make the pick make sense, Fautanu also grew up rooting for the team.
According to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, Fautanu grew up as a Steelers fan and his favorite player was Troy Polamalu.
This pick feels like it couldn’t have gone much better for the Steelers.
Something Different for the Steelers
Drafting Fautanu bucked a couple of trends for the Steelers.
The first is that the Steelers don’t use their first rounder on players from out west very often.
Since 2000, Fautanu is just the third player the team has selected from the western half of the country in the first round.
All three have been from schools that represented the Pac-12 this past season.
The other two picks worked out well for the Steelers. The first was when they selected Polamalu out of USC in 2003. He went on to win a Super Bowl with the Steelers and put together a Hall of Fame career.
Their next 1st rounder from the Pac-12 came in 2013 when they drafted Stanford’s David DeCastro. He went on to make six Pro Bowls and earn three All-Pro nods.
He is also the first Steelers pick from the Pac-12 in any round since they drafted Juju Smith-Schuster in round two back in 2017.
Selecting Fautanu also meant doing something the Steelers had never done before. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette’s Gerry Dulac, this is the first time in history that the Steelers have drafted offensive linemen in round one of back-to-back drafts.
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