Player Development

Short, simple, and sweet. Yes or No. Do you think the team is developing players as well as they possibly can? If you feel the need to explain your answer go ahead. I am just curious about how the board feels about this element of the team.

 

I think this has been a consistent positive historically for the Steelers. It is one of the reasons why they allow free agents to leave and never seem to skip a beat. The team competes every year despite player turnover. This has to have something to do with player development.

 

Yes I do. How many undrafted or late round guys do we have that are significant contributors? Plus we build through the draft vs. free agency. I just wish that we could get a bit better at speeding up that process of development. Consider what this team has accomplished the last couple of years with one of the worst OL's in football. I would love to see Brady or Manning play behind that line and see what they could accomplish.

 

I agree historically this has been the case. I know the injury bug forced the teams hand a bit this year but I think the plug and play ability of the past has decreased some.

 

I agree somewhat but are these players skills being developed? If you pop over to the Wallace thread there seems to be many who think he has peaked, other who do not. Is he improving and developing as a player? I really wish we could see a "Hard Knocks" kinda of documentary about the Steelers because I would love to see their film study sessions, their one on one breakdowns and such just to see hwo they approach player development.

 

what about redman I would say he has developed nicely wouldn't you

 

Yes he has, although I would liken Redman's development to Harrison's. He is driven and that drive can make a player seek out more coaching, more work outs, training harder, that sort of thing. He has shown some remarkable development though.

 

Without a boubt, YES!

 

I'm on the fence with this one because I'm concerned about Timmons, Worilds, and Sylvester. It also seems that Ziggy's level of play dropped off in 2011.

We have NOTHING in the secondary. Kennan Lewis maybe.

Cameron Heyward had a decent rookie year. I'm all right with where Marcus Gilbert is as a rookie--he got thrown to the wolves early and did as well as we could expect. Someone already mentioned Redman and Dwyer.

 

I think Wallace is getting better. This year he was a known commodity and defenses schemed to take him away. Brown was the biggest benefit of single coverage since Wallace is getting doubled.

I am not worried about Timmons since he played 4 different positions this year. Give him a full year at ILB without jumping him around. Worilds saw his first significant playing time this year and Sylvester is still learning the reads etc.

C. Brown, C. Allen and Kennan Lewis I think is a pretty good young lineup for CB's. Key is keeping those guys healthy.

 

i think they do a decent job of it. just not very quickly. we have a pretty decent amount of coaching turnover to deal with too. good teams have that problem. they can only develop what they are given to work with too, don't forget. we have a way of making udfa into players faster then we can make mid rounders into players. is it the mid round picks? we have gone through several guards over the last 5-6 seasons without a real hit.

 

*bump*

I wanted to resurrect this thread because there has been alot of talk about Wallace and his lack of skills in certain aspects of the game as well as comments made by Ben about changing the playbook hurting this young receiving corp's development. At the time I started this many of us thought and hoped that Arains would be gone and replaced by someone who did things differently. So same question going forward do you think that many of the young players will be developed or will it be more of the same? Ben's comments about learning a new playbook or new terminology bothers me because I think spending half of practice working on when plays broke down seems like it would hamper their development more than saying we are going to learn new plays and practice them to we do it right.

 

Depends upon the position. Most of our young guys seem to be developing well with the exception of OL & to a slightly lesser degree, DB.

 

Yes.

 

Previously I'd say DB, but looking at what Lake has done with these guys and what the rookies and 2nd year guys did this year has me holding out hope.

 

Overall, yes. The Steelers are great at this, especially LB, DL. Hard to find better examples of development than Smith and Keisel.

DB has been a weak(er) spot pretty much my entire life, but the new guy has given me faith in future development for the first time ever. The OL seems to have relied 100% on individual player talent alone ever since Grimm left.