Pittsburgh Steelers
Training camp report dates: rookies (July 24) and veterans (July 25).
Location: Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
Most important position battle: No. 2 receiver. No one pops out as an obvious candidate to replace JuJu Smith-Schuster, set to assume Antonio Brown's old mantle as the No. 1 man. Of course, the Steelers have a real and demonstrated history of unearthing receiving talent. (Remember back when Mike Wallace was the premier receiver in Pittsburgh and Brown was a sixth-round rookie buried on the depth chart behind Wallace, Hines Ward, fellow rookie Emmanuel Sanders and, uh, a 31-year-old Antwaan Randle El?) Donte Moncrief has experience (69 games, 346 targets and 200 catches in five seasons), but he's still chasing the career year he posted in 2015 (105 targets, 64 catches, 733 yards and six touchdowns). Second-year pro James Washington had just 16 catches for 217 yards and a score as a rookie, but he's also earned the enthusiastic backing of none other than Smith-Schuster. Rookie Diontae Johnson (a third-round pick out of Toledo) and veterans Eli Rogers and Ryan Switzer (striving to be more than a returner) also figure to be in the mix.
Newcomer/player returning from injury to watch: Devin Bush, linebacker. Since 2000, the Steelers have drafted five players 15th overall or higher: Plaxico Burress (No. 8 in 2000), Ben Roethlisberger (No. 11 in 2004), Lawrence Timmons (No. 15 in 2007), Ryan Shazier (No. 15 in 2014) and Bush (No. 10 in April). The defense has fared well enough over the past few seasons, but there is still a need for someone to fill the role of leader at inside linebacker left vacant by Shazier's catastrophic injury in 2017. Enter Bush, who landed on Lance Zierlein's Defensive Rookie of the Year watch list. The comparisons will only be encouraged by Bush's revelation that he and Shazier communicate "daily," and that he considers Shazier "like my big brother."
Looming camp question: What will life be like with just one Killer B? Brown is on one coast. Le'Veon Bell is on the other. This is Ben Roethlisberger's show alone once again. To find a season in which neither Brown nor Bell played a significant role, you'd have to go back to 2010, when Bell was a freshman at Michigan State and Brown was (as mentioned above) an afterthought on the roster. That was also the last time the Steelers reached the Super Bowl. I tend to think that better players make for better teams, and the relative lack of postseason success over the Bell-Brown years had more to do with injuries and bad luck than anything else. But it can also be true that, for various reasons, this group had gone as far as it was going to go together. There is reason to think Smith-Schuster and James Conner will thrive in place of Brown and Bell, but both players face questions. Smith-Schuster has never been the primary target in Pittsburgh over a full season, while Conner's promising 2018 ended on a downward slope in terms of production, with an ankle injury throwing a wrench in the gears. An added wrinkle: Jaylen Samuels, who played well in his own right while filling in for Conner last season, has said he and Conner will be on the field at the same time. Will we get any glimpses in August of what makes Roethlisberger jazzed about this offense?
read more
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap300...gn=Twitter_atn
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by hawaiiansteeler
