Dylan Cook
Dylan Cook
While fans wait for Max Iheanachor, Steelers OL coach James Campen isn’t sleeping on Dylan Cook, his starting right tackle. After an offseason of competition, the second-year man looks to open a season as a starter for the first time. It’s unclear for how long he might hold that job, but it could be up to him.
And Campen isn’t about to put it past him to do that. Speaking to reporters recently, he was highly complimentary of Cook. “He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do”, Brian Batko quoted him as saying for the team’s website. “He’s gone over and played some left [tackle] just in case he’s needed there. But he’s grown; he’s getting his feet underneath him, his base. He’s playing stronger. We’re all very proud of him. He’s done a really good job. He’s a Montana kid who was a [rookie] free agent who doesn’t accept losing”.
Dylan Cook signed as a college free agent with the Buccaneers in 2022. Though the coaches wanted him on the roster, he spent that season on the practice squad. After signing with the Steelers in May 2023, he made the 53-man roster later that season but did not play. An injury led to his beginning 2024 on IR, and once healthy, the team elected to shift him to the practice squad.
He began last season there as well. After Broderick Jones’ late-season injury, however, the Steelers promoted Dylan Cook to the 53-man roster. Andrus Peat initially started in Jones’ place, but a concussion forced Cook to step in for his NFL debut.
After acquitting himself well last year, Cook entered this offseason in the lead for a starting role. Jones’ recovery from injury at the time remained unclear, and they had not yet drafted Max Iheanachor, their first-round pick. Iheanachor will start, eventually, but can Cook hold him off all season?
From the way Campen describes him, you’d think that he can. But at the same time, it would seem that they need Dylan Cook to be their backup left tackle. Iheanachor is pretty exclusively a right tackle, and they traded Jones. If Troy Fautanu were to go down, would Cook have to move over to the left?
When Jones was a rookie, he practiced pretty exclusively at left tackle, but didn’t win the job. Yet during the regular season, he began working at right tackle, and eventually took over that season from Chukwuma Okorafor. It’s not impossible that the Steelers will extensively cross-train Iheanachor in the coming weeks to make him the swing tackle.
If that is the case, though, it could hurt his chances of starting this year. But maybe the Steelers aren’t counting on that. Maybe they, like James Campen, see Dylan Cook as more than capable of handling the job on his own. Like the rest of them, he spent this offseason learning a new offense and a new blocking scheme. Now, through the growing pains, all that’s left in front of him is just to play. At long last, until they tell him to take a seat.