LATROBE, Pa. – It's time. Time for the acclimation period to be over and for the players to put on the pads. For the players undoubtedly, it's time for a day off. And using a more narrow focus, it was time for the offense to assert itself during 7-Shots.
The Steelers completed their fourth and final acclimation period practice on Sunday on the sun-baked fields at Saint Vincent College where temperatures were in the 90s. Following a mandatory day off on Monday, the team returns on Tuesday for a 10:30 a.m. session where the players will be wearing pads.
"Another really good acclimation day. Now we'll have a day off, and we'll get into the real meat of this as we carry our pads (on Tuesday), and it'll be more football-like," said Coach Mike Tomlin. "That will provide a great opportunity to teach and learn and a great opportunity to show what their capabilities are.
"But before we get to that, I just thought we had another really good day today. The highlight from my perspective was defensive ball awareness and searching. I thought the guys were really aggressive in terms of going after the football, punching it out, raking it and so forth, and that's just a component of laying the foundation for some things that are important to us. But when you're working iron-on-Iron like you do in this situation, there are winners and losers. And so if the defense is doing a good job of searching the ball, that means we've got to do a better job of securing it on offense. And that's the ebb and flow that is training camp."
One drill that needed a little more ebb and flow of late has been 7-Shots, and the offense delivered some of that on Sunday by snapping a two-day losing streak to the defense. The offense's victory was either 6-1 or 5-2 depending on the final determination of a pass to Quez Watkins in the back of the end zone. If video shows he secured the catch in-bounds, then it was 6-1, but if not it was 5-2.
One of the interesting/unusual elements of this installment was that it began with a touchdown run by Najee Harris and ended with a touchdown run by La'Mical Perine. The running element should become a bigger part of these proceedings starting Tuesday when the pads go on.
But even though the offense won 7-Shots along with the cafeteria bragging rights that come with that, Tomlin liked what he saw from his defense in terms of hunting the football. And in that area, rookie inside linebacker Payton Wilson and veteran newcomer Donta Jackson did some nice things.
"He's highly conditioned. I think it starts there, and it's showing itself in the form of hustle and finish. And sometimes hustle and finish puts you in position to do some of those things," said Tomlin in assessing Wilson's afternoon. "We don't ask a lot of the new guys, but we do ask them to come ready for the work. He is highly conditioned and appears to be in position in that regard."
Jackson was acquired in a trade to start opposite Joey Porter Jr. at cornerback, and he came away with an interception of Justin Fields on a play where there seemed to be a miscommunication on the route run by Roman Wilson. Regardless of assessing blame, Jackson was in a position to make the play.
"I like his energy, I like his spirit," said Tomlin about Jackson. "He's a football lover. He's competitive. But we knew all that about him before he got here. That's why he's here. It's just confirming some of that."
In past training camps, defensive backs and/or wide receivers sometimes would drop to the ground and do 10 pushups as self-imposed punishment for dropping a ball. In this training camp, offensive linemen run a lap for committing a pre-snap penalty in a move originated by offensive line coach Pat Meyer and endorsed by coordinator Arthur Smith.
"Just a teach tool," said Tomlin when asked about it. "We're just trying to accelerate the learning process and using all the tools at our disposal in an effort to do so."
Seen running laps on Sunday were Anderson Hardy, Mason McCormick, Troy Fautanu, Joey Fisher, and Ryan McCollum.
TOMLIN'S INJURY UPDATE: "From a health standpoint, no real updates. Russell Wilson worked partially today and expect him to get going a little bit as we come back from this off day. Rodney Williams has an AC-sprain. We'll see how many days that takes for him to get back. We had some bumps and bruises associated with competition. I think all of those that occurred, though, the guys came back and finished practice so it's probably nothing to speak of."
