Kevin Dotson is a simple man with simple pleasures. He’s been keeping himself busy this offseason with the things he loves the most.
“I’ve been painting, working out, sleeping,” Dotson said, with a smile, in a recent interview with Missi Matthews from Steelers.com.
A passion he’s had since grade school, Dotson loves to paint and draw in his downtime. It’s second to his passion for football, of course.
And though he loves the game, Dotson doubted himself during the pre-draft process.
“The draft process was really putting a lot of stress on me. Am I even going to make it to the league? Am I going to be good enough to compete?”
But those thoughts dissipated, and Dotson felt a weight lifted after the draft.
“Once I got into the league and started practicing and playing in games, that weight of anxiety and stress came off me,” he said. “Now I can focus on becoming better instead of wondering if I belong.”
Now Dotson is one year removed from that process; he can think about the present with the Steelers and how to improve his game.
Dotson has been working with offensive line guru Duke Manyweather to study and practice technique, fundamentals and functional movement.
The rookie functionally moved plenty of defenders last season, especially as a pass blocker. Dotson needs to get better in the run game, but that could be said about every Steelers lineman from 2020. Not to mention, there were five games in 13 appearances that Dotson didn’t play at all. It isn’t easy to boost an aspect of your game without live-action.
Overall, though, Dotson says that improving the run game will be a collective effort.
“It’s going to be a group thing,” Dotson said. “We’re going to have to diagnose what we did wrong last year. We’ll work on footwork, the mechanics of run-blocking progression. It’s just one of those things where, if we all come together, we can change things for the better.”
Steelers Nation is looking forward to what they can bring in 2021.
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