Something comes from nothing.
I suppose those four words could be spoken of any facet of our civilization that finds its way back to life these days, not least of which is football in our lives here in Pittsburgh. One day, I'd gone several months without laying eyes on the Steelers, and the next, here they were, spread all over Heinz Field for a spirited, occasionally snarly practice as part of training camp.
Tuesday marked the second day of padded practices, the second day of the media being allowed inside, but the first for me.
If heaven could have a mustard bowl for a backdrop, then this definitely felt like heaven:
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Heinz Field, Tuesday afternoon. - DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS[/caption]
Nice, huh?
A few clouds only added to the pure Pittsburgh.
But no, hey, the something coming from nothing that I referenced, that was a stirring connection between Ben Roethlisberger and Vance McDonald.
It was during a seven-shots drill on a field that was flipped sideways -- sideline to sideline -- to try to preserve the only turf the Steelers can use for this unique camp, so it came right my way, seemingly out of nowhere. I was standing at the front row of yellow seats, roughly on the 50-yard line, from what would be the defensive vantage point. The ball was snapped way at the far end.
(Man, I wish I had more than verbiage for this visual. But there's no video allowed of this portion of practice, and reporters are even limited by NFL guidelines on revealing the specifics of personnel, formations and the like. So, hey.)
Upon the snap, the usual mass of humanity ensues as the line, and Ben basically disappears. At the same time, there are two packs of players sprinting my way, receiving targets and defensive backs, maybe six total, all in a narrow line.
Until ... McDonald breaks free, veering violently out to his left.
Until ... Ben releases the ball, maybe a split-second before McDonald's break.
Until ... McDonald collects the catch, whirls back forward and takes off anew.
Nothing. Then something.
And I started thinking, already in a football-sappy state of mind, if that might be symbolic for how this 2020 season unfolds for the local football franchise. Especially for the offense.
I mean, everyone's abuzz about Ben, and I get it. After seeing him myself here, any and all doubt's erased that he's all the way back. His throws were hard, precise and delivered with midseason-level timing. I've been optimistic throughout, as his elbow surgery wasn't anything that should've impacted him in the long term, but I'd be lying if I said I expected this.
As in, this:
Even Mike Tomlin, the only person here to pipe up so much as an ill syllable about Ben's throwing with that jab a week ago about his spirals, offered on his own after this session: "I like his velocity. I acknowledge that I have seen his spiral tighter. But I also acknowledge it’s August and we’ve got roughly a month before we step into a stadium. So we’ll all keep working.”
Ultimately, Ben's what matters most. We saw that in 2019.
And yet ... the bar isn't 2019. It just isn't. With Mason Rudolph and Duck Hodges, the Steelers ranked 30th in total offense, 31st in passing, 29th in rushing, 26th in scoring. It sounds horrible. It was horrible. But sorry, once the franchise quarterback goes down, all bars are blown to bits. Because the bar just before that, in 2018, with Ben at the helm but also notably with Antonio Brown still in the fold, the Steelers ranked fourth in total offense, second in passing, 31st in rushing, sixth in scoring.
As such, the goal can't be some incremental rebound, to say the least. Not with Ben back. Not with the group that's surrounding him looking that much stronger. It's got to be -- no stretch -- the greatest leap of any team in the NFL, arguably into the league's top 10. And if that looks to casual observers like some astonishing achievement, or something from nothing, so be it.
But those of us who are more than casual ... come on.
It's about the most complete, most diverse collection of wide receivers Ben will have had in some time: JuJu Smith-Schuster, Diontae Johnson, James Washington and now Chase Claypool, who continued to impress again in this session.
It's about a healthy-for-now-anyway James Conner who, like JuJu, is entering a contract year and hellbent on 16-game participation, along with ... you know, I'm going to start skipping the rest of these running backs before long and go right to Anthony McFarland. I'll explain below.
It's about not one but two tight ends in McDonald and Eric Ebron.
It's about a largely experienced, still sturdy offensive line.
Tell me, please, what I'm missing.
Before the practice, I broached the subject of this offense's expectations with McDonald, not so much related to his quarterback's revival but to the cast as a whole, and his response was animated, all-encompassing and beautiful.
"When I just look at our receiver room, it’s crazy. JuJu to me is always young JuJu, but at the same time, he’s not young anymore. In fact, he’s the veteran of the room. You just see guys, JuJu, Diontae, James ... who else am I missing? It’s just like it’s crazy. They all have their niches. They all have their things that they excel at. James, he can go get the ball anywhere in the air, and it’s crazy to watch him. Diontae runs unbelievable routes. JuJu is just JuJu. It’s fun to see Chase and seeing some of the things that he’s capable of doing."
He caught his breath a moment and came back to my question.
"I just think it's exactly like you said. There’s no reason with Ben at the helm, back to 100 percent, with this crazy hunger for going and winning it all, I don’t see us not having a very explosive offense."
Mind the double-negative. He means it'll be explosive.
"You go into our backfield. Look at James and look at Jaylen Samuels. Look at what some of the other guys stepped in and did last year. Not only is it going to be a hard decision for the third back, you have dual-threat backs that can line up in the slot like James and Jaylen both, essentially the same as Le’Veon Bell was when I first got here."
He finally made it to his own position.
"You look at the addition of Eric, and it’s just ... all around ... look, there’s no way I could ever, objectively, remove the fact that I’m a Steeler, but I just don’t see how our offense cannot be super-productive and be one of the top offenses in the NFL. The excitement is everywhere here in our building. We know what we can reach, the numbers we can put up, and we’re excited."
There's a lot of that feel here, and it's not the standard training camp fluff. They're seeing it in motion.
Maybe it'll surprise everyone else at some point soon.
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T.J. Watt and Vance McDonald engage Tuesday at Heinz Field. - STEELERS[/caption]
• Between McDonald and Ebron, it's reasonable to presume deploying two tight ends, even if they line up together, will cut the catch opportunities for both. That could also cause friction in a positional classroom that's accustomed to being focused on one starter rather than two.
I asked James Daniel, the tight ends coach, how he's navigated that, and he went deep: "If you're a professional, guys will always coexist well. Somebody might feel like it's a problem to have two guys like that, but I really don't. When we've been at our best around here, we had Heath Miller and Matt Spaeth. We had two pretty good tight ends in the room and a good football team around them. I look forward to having two good tight ends. It's up to us as a coaching staff to mesh them, to find out how to use them best to win football games on Sundays."
I was sure he was done. But he wasn't: "You don't ever want to turn down having a lot of talent. Because having talent is a heck of a lot better than not having talent."
Neither of these guys is Heath, obviously, but they're both far better than Spaeth, who was known almost entirely for his blocking. This will be fun.
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Joe Haden watches from the sideline Tuesday at Heinz Field. - STEELERS[/caption]
• One thing about the lack of preseason: The team's certain to stay a lot healthier, and I'm not talking about the virus.
Oh, two players were hurt in this session, rookie guard Kevin Dotson (knee) and tight end Dax Raymond (ankle), and a handful of others were held out: Ebron, Washington, David DeCastro, Alejandro Villanueva and Joe Haden. Washington and DeCastro have minor injuries, and Washington did some light work. The rest are part of what Tomlin called a 'veteran rotation' he expects to apply through camp, in part because he'd like to see more youngsters given all the lost reps this summer.
• Roethlisberger stood over Dotson the entire time he was down, then was one of the two people, along with an athletic trainer, to help Dotson off the field to the far tunnel.
"That's the kind of teammate Ben is," Tomlin would say.
• DeCastro and Villanueva being out afforded Tomlin the chance to go with an offensive line, left to right, of Chuks Okorafor, Matt Feiler, Maurkice Pouncey, Stefen Wisniewski and Zach Banner, a formation they showed even before the formal portion of practice, so clearly part of the plan.
Banner had a strong showing, I thought, particularly in engulfing people on runs to his side. He also got into it twice -- 'close disagreements' was the agreed-upon terminology for our pool report -- with T.J. Watt. It wasn't clear what set either off, as it was occurring on the far sideline of another sideways drill.
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Anthony McFarland makes a catch Tuesday at Heinz Field. - STEELERS[/caption]
• Good luck keeping McFarland off the field in 2020. This kid finds daylight, then embraces it. The Steelers don't have another back like him. I won't take it any further than that for now.
• Tomlin can't take his eyes off the tight ends doing sled work. For the second straight day, he was front and center and very vocal. Notably, he was vocal with Zach Gentry, who's a third-string tight end seemingly hellbent on becoming a fourth-string tight end based on his early showing.
"Can’t warm up to it today, Zach Gentry!" Tomlin shouted. "Gotta get off the bus ready."
Duly motivated, Gentry rammed that sled back several yards and let out a loud grunt, to which Tomlin exclaimed a classic Michael Scott-ism from the TV show 'The Office' that I won't repeat here. But I swear, I was still laughing at this a half-hour after leaving the building.
• What a day for Ulysees Gilbert, the seemingly forgotten inside linebacker who's looking like more than depth behind Devin Bush and Vince Williams: He had a diving interception after wrestling the ball away from speedy Kerrith Whyte on a one-on-one coverage drill, a pass defensed against Samuels on that same set of drills, and what would've been a sack if such things were allowed in this setting.
"Just being patient and just watching his hands and having light hands with myself and trying to break up the ball," Gilbert recalled of the pick. "At the end of the day, he bobbled it a little bit, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on it and bring it in. It was just a pretty good play."
His fellow linebackers, including Bush and Williams, hooted it up after both of the coverage plays.
• The caution and care in how everything's handled here is ... exactly what one would expect.
As with all the Major League Baseball camp/game settings I've covered in coronavirus times, reporters are kept far from any participants, as well as socially distanced from each other. We enter on the opposite side of Heinz Field, we're given physical limitations on where we can move, and we're escorted from one station to the next throughout the day. There originally was a plan to have us carry location trackers to make sure none of us ran astray, but that mercifully was scrapped.
Oh, and sanitizer, sanitizer, sanitizer every which way anyone turns.
• Social distancing has gone too far when Tunch Ilkin and Craig Wolfley are seated nearly a full section apart, yet still sharing live observations with each other.
"Hey, Tunch! You see that?"
"See what, Wolf?"
I stood somewhere in the middle at one point to try to assist.
• Only one reporter per outlet is permitted into NFL camps at a time. Dale Lolley will be back here the rest of this week.
MORE AT STEELERS CAMP
• Foster: To aggressors go spoils
• Lolley: Claypool already a hit
• Kovacevic: 20 things to go right
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