New position coach Pat Meyer understands tradition associated with Steelers O-line play

Pat Meyer understands his task at hand: namely, overseeing the reconstruction of the Pittsburgh Steelers offensive line and returning the unit to the upper echelon of the NFL.

Meyer, 50, was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. He was in grade school when the Steelers completed their run of Super Bowl titles in the 1970s with “Iron” Mike Webster anchoring the offensive line.

He was entering college a decade later when the Steelers returned to prominence and deployed a line that included future Hall of Fame center Dermontti Dawson. He was early in his coaching career when Alan Faneca was building his Hall of Fame resume, and he was coaching in the NFL when Maurkice Pouncey and David DeCastro were the foundation of the Steelers line in the past decade.

The standard that Mike Tomlin preaches isn’t lost on Meyer, who is in his first season as the Steelers offensive line coach.

“I get it,” Meyer said Tuesday. “I grew up 50 miles from Pittsburgh. I get the tradition. That’s the way we want it. You want it that way. You want to be talked about — good or bad. That’s NFL football, that’s Pittsburgh Steelers football, and we’re not going to back down or shy away from it.

“We’re going to continue to go. We have to.”

Meyer is the latest assistant tasked with coaching the line since Mike Munchak relocated to Denver after the 2018 season. Shaun Sarrett lasted two seasons before his contract wasn’t renewed. Adrian Klemm, an assistant under Sarrett, didn’t make it through one season as O-line coach, bolting to Oregon in December. His assistant, Chris Morgan, finished up the year and then accepted a job with the Chicago Bears.

Enter Meyer, the fourth person to hold the offensive line coach title in the past three seasons.

“It’s always good to have a coach that you’ve been with for more than one year,” left guard Kevin Dotson said. “You have to take the coaching that comes and be able to lock in and hope you’re with a coach more than one year.”

Meyer joined the Steelers after spending two seasons coaching the offensive line with the Carolina Panthers. Before that, he was the Los Angeles Chargers offensive line coach for three years.

When he got to Pittsburgh, Meyer decided not to rip up everything and start from scratch even though the Steelers finished 29th in rushing last year and Ben Roethlisberger was sacked 38 times, his highest total since 2013.

“You look at what we did here last year and what we can improve on and what you can build on from last year,” Meyer said. “You take it from there and build on what you have.”

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Meyer inherited a line that returns just two players guaranteed of retaining their starting jobs from 2021: left tackle Dan Moore and right tackle Chuks Okorafor. The Steelers signed center Mason Cole and right guard James Daniels in free agency and shifted Kendrick Green to left guard so he could compete with Dotson at that position.

“It’s a young line,” Meyer said. “It’s not like we have a big, veteran line. They need to learn. We need to build trust. I need to be able to trust them, and they need to be able to trust me. That part hasn’t been an issue with me. They listen and try. That’s all I can ask for now.”

As with any position coach tasked with making improvements in his first season on the job, Meyer decided to focus on fundamentals. Asked which ones he decided to emphasize, Meyer smiled.

“Everything,” he said. “From how we are setting in pass pro, how we are shooting our hands, what kind of steps are we taking in the run game, where are our hands going, where are our eyes, what kind of combinations do we have help in and don’t have help in.

“It’s every little aspect we try to dissect and break down for these guys and continue to work it and work it every day.”

Meyer has preached one other component, Daniels said.

“Play together. The biggest thing he has been talking about is playing together and communicating,” he said. “If we’re all wrong, we’re all right. Be as close as we can. If someone makes a mistake, know that someone else is doing their job so they can make up for that mistake.”

Dotson has noticed a difference between Meyer and Klemm, who spent two seasons coaching the third-year guard.

“He definitely takes his time more often with us, is more detail-oriented,” Dotson said of Meyer. “He’s good at motivation. He’s really welcoming into talking to you after practice. … It’s more of a quality thing. Coaches are like teachers. Some have better styles that work for different students.”

Meyer admits that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in his line of work.

“Even if they play the same position, they may not have the same athletic traits,” he said. “I think you coach them the same fairly, but you treat them individually different because they have different attributes. In the offseason, you slow it down and say, ‘Here is what we are trying to accomplish and get done.’ You slow it down for them. Now in the fall, we’ve worked on it for months and months.

“Now it’s time to show what we can do.”

The first test comes Saturday night in the preseason opener against Seattle.