The first round of the 2024 NFL Draft has been eventful. It worked out well for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Six Quarterbacks were chosen in the top 12 picks, with one of them selected by the Falcons, who had recently signed Kirk Cousins to a $180 million contract.
The first 14 picks were all on the offensive side of the ball.
Despite all the offensive picks, the Steelers ended up getting an offensive player who wasn't expected to be available at pick 20 before the draft started.
The Steelers used the 20th pick to pick former Washington right tackle Troy Fautanu.
A Great Fit for the Steelers
Before the draft, the Steelers' offensive line needed the most help.
The team did not have a real center on their roster. Additionally, 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 ability to play elsewhere on the line in the future depending on what the Steelers do later on.
For now, he'll occupy a position where he excelled in college. Throughout his career at Washington, he played right tackle and only allowed 3 sacks and 35 pressures in over 1300 pass block snaps, according to PFF.
His stellar performance 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 justify the pick, Fautanu also grew up supporting 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.
A Different Approach for the Steelers
Selecting Fautanu goes against a couple of trends for the Steelers.
The first is that the Steelers rarely use their first-round pick on players from the west.
Since 2000, Fautanu is only the third player the team has chosen from the western half of the country in the first round.
All three have been from schools in the Pac-12 conference.
The other two picks worked out well for the Steelers. The first was when they selected Polamalu from USC in 2003. He went on to win a Super Bowl with the Steelers and had a Hall of Fame career.
Their next first-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.
