Shirt pocket notes from Steeler Training Camp

*What a beautiful and fun day always!
*The place was packed to the gills! The place was rocking. There were more people in The merchandise tent than go to jags or bengal games!
*All that said, it was not the "best " day for practice: No Ben, no Watt, (T.J. ran with a trainer on the sidelines) and worst of all, no pads! Shells only, and I think the reason was a ref crew was there, so after warmups there was 2 and a half hours of scrimmages, broken up every 25 minutes by 15 minutes of individual group work. No pads = no hitting. Hard to evaluate players with no hitting.
*The new O-Line coach is so much more animated than Mike Munchack was. He really lit into them a couple of times.
*Mason Rudolph throws a beautiful deep ball, not as accurate as Big Ben, but always a tight beautiful spiral.
*All the Steeler tight ends have good height. Rookie Zach Gentry stood out.
*Coaching intern William Gay was all over the D.B.'s. When practice was over, Gay had the D.B.'s catching balls out of the jugs machine.
*If they call P.I. during the games like they did at practice today, the games might take 6 hours to play!
*Rookie I was impressed with: R.B. Benny Snell.
*Rookie who impressed me, who doesn't have an open position: O.L. Derwin Grey.
*Play of the day : James Washington's diving end zone catch from Mason Rudolph, in the last scrimmage.
*Defensive play of the day: Steve Nelson's pick 6 off of Mason Rudolph.
*Dionte Spencer reminds me of Randle El. Explosive, but...he dropped some punts. Cam Sutton actually looks more comfortable returning punts, but he is not as explosive. They also tried some other rooks returning punts with mixed results.
* Jason Gildon was the former player taking pictures with everybody and signing autographs.
*It is so cool to be sitting there watching practice and look up and see a jet flying over the field about to land at Arnold Palmer Airport.
* On an optimistic note, it seems to me the D has more speed this year, but again no pads, so we will have to see.
* I love going to camp!

 

Ben There - good report. Somebody needs to do a caption this on that photo.

 

The Standard is the standard!

 

Mason Rudolph throws a beautiful deep ball, not as accurate as Big Ben, but always a tight beautiful spiral.


Wait, Ben throws an accurate deep ball? That's news to me.

 

Damn, My seat is hot.

 

Good Ben does. Bad Ben doesn’t.

 

I was itching for something like this. Camp reports are lean this year, thanks a lot for the post. Cautiously optimistic that this Steeler team is putting something special together. There is just a different feel coming from these guys, fun..yet very business like.

 

Thanks for the Info. Ben There

 

Speed on defense will make a big difference. We needed it.

Good to hear about sutton. Hilton taking reps at fs. Can or Nelson is capable of jumping to the slot role.

Austin is also saying artie is doing well. Not much being said about b.allen, m.allen or layne that I have heard.

 

I did focus my binocs on Artie, when he was out there, but in Camp they rotate players in and out almost every play, so he was rarely guarding a W.R. 1 like JuJu or Wash.( Nelson or Haden did that heavy lifting) instead he was mainly on a Eli Rodgers or Ken Griffey's kid, so it was hard to judge, but I will say he didn't look lost like last year. He is a work in progress?

 

he's got the talent, it's his head that's the problem. Hopefully he figures that part out.

 

SteelersDepot has detailed camp notes from Alex Kozora, and a nightly podcast.

 

Today is Fan Fest at Heinz Field! I won field passes and me and my daughter will watch from the sidelines. Hopefully they will don pads today. I should have a great view. After practice we will get a signed jersey from one of the players.

 

Good stuff ben. Enjoy that time.

 

My daughter and me head onto Heinz Field for Fan Fest!

 

Signed Switzwer Jersey she won.

 

Me sharing a laugh with Tunch!

 

I cannot rotate these 2 pics, sorry.

 

High 5 with Tunch.

 

I was there also this evening. Some of my observations were that Ben and Juju are really in tune with each other during the 7 on 7 drills. Nelson had good coverage on Juju but Ben was throwing perfect passes and Juju was running great routes. They were unstoppable.
Boswell really looked good tonight and closed practice with a 54 yarder right down the middle that would have been good from a least 60 yards.
On the 3rd and one short yardage drills, Benny Snell was unstoppable as he picked up at least 3 or 4 yards every time and broke one outside for around 15 yards.
On defense I thought that Cam Sutton looked really good and so did Edmonds who had several breakups during the 2 point conversion drill.