No More Musical Chairs? Steelers’ Revamped Right Side Starts to Look the Part

Steelers Found Something Up Front. Now They Have Four Days to Prove It Was Real

PITTSBURGH, PA – Sometimes the highest compliment an offensive lineman can receive is silence.

No pointing. No frantic conversation on the sideline. No center turning to the new guy wondering what the hell just happened.

That was essentially Zach Frazier’s review of the Steelers’ revamped right side after Pittsburgh finally found some traction up front against Cincinnati.

Asked specifically about rookie Max Iheanachor and the changes alongside him, Frazier had to think about it for a rather encouraging reason.

“You don’t notice anything bad,” Frazier said Tuesday after practice. “There’s nothing like you went to the sideline and said, ‘Oh, rookie mistake, you missed a block,’ or something. It was just really clean from that standpoint. I didn’t notice anything, so it was good.”

For an offensive line that entered the Bengals game needing something different, boring was beautiful.

The reshuffling gave Pittsburgh a different look on the right side, but more importantly, the five-man operation finally began looking less like five separate pieces trying to solve the same puzzle.

Iheanachor and Brock Hoffman replaced Dylan Cook and Spencer Anderson to try and fortify the right side of the line.

Frazier understands how quickly perceptions of an offensive line can swing.

“Sometimes you look at like two games ago and you’re like, ‘Oh, the sky’s falling down,’” Frazier said. “But really, it’s not that. It’s really just one person here or there that kind of didn’t get the job done.”

That’s the cruelty of playing offensive line in the NFL. Four guys can be right and one can be wrong, and the television replay makes all five look guilty.

“That’s the difference in this league,” Frazier said. “Just those small, small details.”

Against Cincinnati, those details finally began cooperating.

The Steelers got their running game moving, Jaylen Warren found daylight, and the newly configured line walked away with something more valuable than statistics: evidence that the arrangement can work.

Young Piece Meshing Together

Troy Fautanu felt it, too.

“Obviously, that trust that we’re trying to build every single week,” Fautanu said. “Between us and the backs and the tight ends and stuff like that.”

There won’t be much time to enjoy it.

Four days after handling one type of defensive front, Pittsburgh gets almost the opposite Thursday night in Cleveland.

Frazier described Cincinnati as featuring “bigger, stronger type guys.” Cleveland presents speed, penetration and movement.

“These are more smaller, quicker type guys,” Frazier said. “Penetrate, athleticism. So, it’s definitely a difference.”

And that difference matters considerably for a line whose newest configuration has exactly one game together.

Cleveland can attack communication rather than simply attack a gap.

Frazier specifically mentioned the Browns’ line games and their ability to create pressure through movement.

“They’re getting home with a lot of picks, stunts and stuff like that,” he said. “They’re definitely playing good ball on defense and all playing together really well.”

No Myles Garrett changes the individual matchup. It doesn’t eliminate the collective problem.

Fautanu wasn’t interested in spending much time discussing who isn’t there.

“Not worried about him,” Fautanu said. “That D-line is playing really well these last three weeks. Just got to make sure we’re bringing our A-game.”

There is another wrinkle.

Pittsburgh doesn’t have a normal week to install answers for everything Cleveland might throw at its new offensive-line combination.

Oddly enough, Fautanu thinks that can simplify things.

“I guess you can say that eliminates the thinking,” he said. “It’s kind of just playing ball at that point.”

That’s a pretty good description of where this Steelers offensive line suddenly finds itself.

Don’t overthink Cincinnati. Don’t assume one good afternoon repaired everything. Don’t expect the same blocks against a completely different defensive front.

Just carry the trust forward.

“Especially going into a game like this where it’s going to be super loud,” Fautanu said, “just trusting that the guy next to you is going to do their job.”

Frazier put it even more simply.

“You never want to be complacent, think it’s just going to happen every week,” he said. “You got to go back to work.”

The Steelers changed the right side and got a result.

Now comes the harder part.

Making Sunday look less like a lineup change and more like the beginning of an offensive line.