Quarterback, receiver headline rookie minicamp

By all indications, Mason Rudolph has not met Ben Roethlisberger yet, and they will not exchange greetings this weekend when the third-round draft pick and a gaggle of Steelers rookies gather for their minicamp.

Rudolph, though, will throw his first passes as a Steelers quarterback, teaming up again with his Oklahoma State battery-mate James Washington, the team’s second-round draft choice.

That pitch-and-catch duo should provide the highlight of a rookie camp that normally provides very few of them, as the new players are introduced to the playbook, their jobs, fellow rookies, their surroundings and even the city that only a portion of them will occupy in the fall.

Here, a Steelers rookie minicamp primer, with five things to know going into the start of it Friday:

• Seven draft picks, 13 rookie free agents who signed after the draft, some first-year pros and a gaggle of players on tryouts will participate. No veterans are permitted. NFL rules allow three days of meetings and practices. The combined total cannot be more than 10 hours daily. The rookies, who have not been permitted to work out with the club until minicamp, then can join the veterans at their offfield workouts Monday. OTA practices start May 22.

• Rookies, of course, can make impressions even though there are no pads nor contact, and there often is much confusion as they digest their new playbook. They can make good impressions or bad ones. Take the case of Colin Holba, a sixthround draft pick a year ago as a long-snapper.

Before the draft, the Steelers signed long-snapper Kameron Canaday in February as a so-called “street” free agent, which is a term for someone who has no job after being cut by another team. After the Steelers drafted Holba, Canaday was out of a job again because they cut him May 5. Then came their rookie minicamp and a few OTA practices with the veterans, and apparently the Steelers were not overly impressed with Holba. They signed Canaday back on May 30 and he ultimately won the job and became their long-snapper last season.

• Those with the longest odds of making it at camp this weekend are the tryout players. If rookies, they were not only passed over in the draft but not signed to contracts after the draft. But the Steelers have a history of signing some after the rookie camp.

For example, they signed four tryout players in 2016 to contracts after the rookie minicamp and one, wide receiver Marcus Tucker, is still with them. He spent the past two seasons on their practice squad and re-signed to their 2018 roster.

Last year, they signed two tryout players to contracts right after rookie camp — Matt Galambos and Phazahn Odom.

Galambos spent last season on their injured reserve/ practice squad and is back on a roster thin at his position, inside linebacker. Odom, intriguing as a 6-foot8 tight end, did not make it. Galambos and Tucker will attend this rookie camp.

• Besides Rudolph, the Steelers will have tryout quarterback Alex Torgersen at this week’s camp mainly because Rudolph can’t take all the snaps and make all the throws. They don’t want his arm to fall off just yet.

Torgersen is a 6-3, 229pound rookie from Penn who has no chance of making the team or even getting an invite to training camp because they already have four. But others have made impressions in one rookie camp and signed with another team. So there’s that.

• Outside linebacker is another position with little depth, and that makes Keion Adams an intriguing prospect. He won’t be at the rookie minicamp because he does not qualify even though he has never played a down.

The Steelers drafted him in the seventh round from Western Michigan last season, and he spent 2017 on their injured reserve.

He was a college defensive end converting to outside linebacker in the Steelers 3-4 defense.

“Keion Adams was a kid we took last year in the seventh round,” GM Kevin Colbert noted after this year’s draft.

“He had a real early start in the training camp and we were real excited about where he was going to be able to go, but unfortunately, he had a shoulder injury that required surgery and he didn’t get to play. But you always had him in the bank. And we know, he’s really another seventh-round pick in our eyes for this season. So we’ll see where he goes.”