It was impressive what Steele was able to do and he isnt someone I'd prefer to quit on so soon.
I would think Knights proven versatility would have him ahead of Steele.
I'm actually not sure why they felt a need to add a veteran swing ahead of them both.
Now add a draft pick to the mix.....
You're the XO guy but not sure I see enough athleticism in Steele to be a NFL LT.
If you really want some XO details...
The interesting strategy the coaches used was to give the most help to Knight and most often leave Steele on his own.
They would help Knight with the RB or TE on many passing snaps but help for Steele was much more limited.
At first I thought that seemed crazy considering that Steele was a rookie UDFA; however, it began to make sense as the season progressed.
They basically told the QB that they would do everything possible to protect his blindside but that it was on him to avoid pressure coming from the frontside (Right Side).
They called plays based on the assumption that the RT was not going to hold up in pass protection.
- i.e. QB rolling left, etc.
Side Note:
- Connor Williams ended up getting blamed by fans for failures that were actually due to them coaching him to be hyper-focused on helping Knight at LT.
- Overall CW actually did a good job of helping Knight, but on some occasions he ended up in a bad position because of it.
- The indirect way that they help Steele was to have Martin over-focus to the outside.
- They had the OC over-focus to the right to offset Martin helping Steele.
- This also increased the degree of difficultly on CW because he received less help from the OC.
- The Cowboys had done that trick with Martin starting his rookie season when they had him helping Doug Free with Frederick cheating over to make up the difference.
- Back then it was Ron Leary and later La'el that ended up playing LG almost like they were playing OT because they were often on a island with no LT or OC in sight.