Up to the challenge
Moats looks to seal starting spot at LB, despite unexpected competition
Two days before linebacker Jason Worilds let everyone else know he was done with football, the Steelers signed the man to replace him to a three-year contract.
Arthur Moats turned down an offer from the Atlanta Falcons to return to the Steelers.
“We knew this was where we wanted to be,” Moats said this week at their Saint Vincent College training camp. “I love my teammates, love my coaching staff and this scheme fits me.”
The left outside linebacker job was wide open, and Moats would succeed Worilds in manning it. That’s the way it looked right up until the night of April 30 when the Steelers selected Bud Dupree with their first-round draft pick.
Dupree plays outside linebacker, and the Steelers immediately put him on the left side, behind Moats. Some players might feel betrayed by that, the way veteran quarterback Tommy Maddox did the day the Steelers drafted Ben Roethlisberger. Moats took the high road. “It’s one of those things, we’re all about getting more talent, making the team better,” he said.
“I feel if me and him are over there competing with each other, that’s only going to make the team that much better. Whichever one comes off the bench, that will be a starter-capable player, starter-level talent to make us that much better.”
Moats may well start the season on the left side as they work in Dupree. That’s how they rolled in LaMarr Woodley’s rookie season when he mostly entered games in passing situations for starter Clark Haggans in 2007.
They made a mistake by throwing Jarvis Jones in as a rookie starter at right outside linebacker in four of their first five games of 2013 and had to pull him because he was in over his head. They had a history of not starting rookies at outside linebacker that went back to the 1970s.
So Moats may indeed start the season on the left side, and he may even hold down that starting job in 2015 as they work in Dupree. But he has to know it’s only a matter of time before the first-round pick moves in. As former personnel boss Tom Donahoe said so well about an earlier first-round pick, the Steelers did not draft him to lead the band at halftime.
“I really want to make my name known early,” Dupree said, standing not far from where Moats was being interviewed.
But if Moats feels Dupree’s hot breath on the back of neck, he’s not wilting from it.
“I feel like the job’s mine until I’m told otherwise,” Moats said.
“It’s all about what you put on tape. That’s any position. If you put bad stuff on tape, they’ll get you out of there.”
Moats has taken a liking to Dupree, who had 23½ sacks at the University of Kentucky.
“Bud’s a good guy. The thing is, you get a firstrounder, some of the guys come in big-headed, just believe they know everything,” Moats said.
“Then you get other guys like Bud, who genuinely wants to learn, wants to get better. Those are the guys you like.”
Moats did a decent job playing a fill-in role last season, his first with the Steelers after he signed a one-year contract as a free agent from Buffalo. He started nine games last season and had four sacks.
The Bills drafted him in the sixth round from James Madison in 2010. He was a popular player in Buffalo, where he won the Bills’ Walter Payton Man of the Year Award.
The Steelers signed him over three years for $7.5 million, which was dwarfed by the nearly $10 million they paid Worilds in one season, 2014, and Dupree’s four-year, $9.2 million contract.
But it also means that when Dupree takes over at left outside linebacker, they won’t have to shed Moats for salary-cap purposes. He could become a valuable No. 3 at outside linebacker, where injuries can take their toll.
Today, Dupree gets his first real chance to show his stuff as the Steelers pull on pads for the first time since their playoff loss to Baltimore. It will be Moats, though, who lines up at left outside linebacker first.
There has been a successful line of men who have played that position for the Steelers over the past 20 years — Kevin Greene, Jason Gildon, Haggans, Woodley and Worilds.
“Those names you just mentioned, it motivates you,” Moats said.
“It makes you understand the situation. But also, if they’re putting you over there, it’s for a reason; they believe in you. It’s on me to go out and display my wares.”