STEELERS CAMP 2021
All eyes will be on Najee Harris come Day 1 … and won’t it be fun?
The Steelers have picked 79 players in the first round of the NFL draft.
Bill Dudley,
Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, Rod Woodson, Troy Polamalu and Alan Faneca made the Hall of Fame, as did Len Dawson, the team’s No. 1 selection in 1957, who had his greatest success with the Kansas City Chiefs. Ben Roethlisberger is sure to join the others in Canton. Maurkice Pouncey and T.J. Watt have a chance.
What a fabulous history. I can’t wait to see where Najee Harris ends up ranking among the Steelers’ No. 1s.
Has there ever been a Pittsburgh athlete who broke in here with more hype and facing greater expectations than Harris? ario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby? Absolutely. Barry Bonds? I’ll give you him.
But among Steelers rookies? I can’t think of one. Not even the great Woodson or the incomparable Polamalu.
Ron Cook
For a second consecutive summer, the Steelers won’t train at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s camp will be staged at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex on the South Side and at Heinz Field, where fans will be able to get an up-close look at the team. ❡ The first practice is scheduled for Thursday on the South Side, and the first open practice at Heinz Field is set for July 28. The Steelers are reporting to camp a week earlier than most teams as they and the Dallas Cowboys get a head start ahead of the Hall of Fame Game, which will be played Aug. 5 in Canton, Ohio. ❡ It’s a good year for Mike Tomlin and his staff to have some extra time to prepare for the season. He has a new offensive coordinator in Matt Canada and plenty of younger players stepping into more prominent roles as older players were phased out. ❡ There were retirements, salary cap casualties and players moving on in free agency in a year the cap decreased by 8% due to the pandemic. It all makes for one of the more anticipated camps in recent memory as Tomlin attempts to keep the championship window open amid drastic changes to his staff and roster.
# 1 One last hurrah
Ben Roethlisberger isn’t the first aging star quarterback to take a pay cut. Peyton Manning and others have swallowed their pride and taken less to return for another season in their twilight years. Manning went out as a Super Bowl champ. Is there one great run left in the two-time Super Bowl winner? Or was the late-season slump last December and January the beginning of the end for Roethlisberger and his surgically repaired right elbow?
Not even Roethlisberger knows the answers to these questions, which will help shape the course of the 2021 season.
“It feels really good,” Roethlisberger said last month. “My arm was healed, obviously, I played. It was healthy. But I think anybody that has a big surgery, it almost takes — like that first year back, you are back but are you really back and feeling great? That’s why I want to reserve to answer that question until we get into the season a little bit to let you know how my arm feels compared to last year.”
Roethlisberger played as well as any quarterback in the league for the first part of the 2020 season. He had 22 touchdowns and only four interceptions after nine games. He was in the MVP conversation. Then the wheels fell off.
He admittedly felt “worn down” late in the season, and his play reflected that. Over his final seven outings, he threw 11 touchdowns and 10 interceptions, with four of those picks coming in the season-ending playoff loss to the Browns. It remains to be seen if there is a Manning-like storybook ending for Roethlisberger, but exiting after playing poorly in a playoff loss was not an option for him.
“It just felt like I had more in the tank,” he said. “I felt disappointed about the way the season ended, obviously, and hate to go out that way.”
# 2 Lay it on the line
What once was the most stable position for years has turned into the most tenuous after three former Pro Bowlers departed after last season. Maurkice Pouncey retired, David DeCastro was released and Alejandro Villanueva signed as a free agent with the Ravens. They combined to earn 17 Pro Bowl nods in the previous decade. In addition, Matt Feiler, who made starts at both tackle and guard since 2018, signed as a free agent with the Chargers.
Truth be told, none of them played particularly well last season and a decline for this once dominant group actually began in 2018.
A reconstruction of the line was inevitable, but making wholesale changes over one offseason has its challenges. Chukwuma Okorafor, pictured above, is the only returning starter, and he’s switching from right to left tackle. Zach Banner is expected to earn the right tackle job after he missed most of last season with a knee injury, and Trai Turner and Kevin Dotson are penciled in as the guards.
Veterans B.J. Finney and J.C. Hassenauer and rookie Kendrick Greene will battle for the starting center job vacated by Pouncey. New line coach Adrian Klemm is implementing a new running scheme that could help with the transition, but there are a lot of new faces in new places in what undoubtedly will be a transition year up front. However, Mike Tomlin is a firm believer the learning curve does not have to be steep. He believes his new hires on the coaching staff can help ease the transition.
“We’re capable of performing better than we have, players aside,” Tomlin said, “Schematics, formations, the things that we do to give ourselves a strategic advantage need to be improved, and that’s some of the things that we’re working on.”
# 3 Unleash Najee
One way to help an aging quarterback and a struggling offensive line is to lean on the running game. The Steelers finally came to this realization and selected running back Najee Harris with their first-round pick in April. The NFL remains a pass-first league, but plenty of teams have had success in recent years by emphasizing the running game in their offense. The Browns, Ravens and Titans were first, second and third in the league in rushing last season. All three made the playoffs and are expected to contend again this year.
The Steelers aren’t likely to commit to the run as strongly as those teams have — not as long as Roethlisberger is the quarterback — but a happy medium could serve them well. Harris has the skills to help an offense that finished last in the league in rushing with a paltry 3.6 yards per attempt.
It shouldn’t be a tough sell to convince Roethlisberger that relying on the running game is a sound strategy. That’s how the Steelers won Super Bowl XL when Roethlisberger was in his second season, and that’s how they became one of the league’s most dangerous offenses when Le’Veon Bell was healthy and at the top of his game.
Can Harris be the next Bell or Jerome Bettis? Much depends on the development of the line, but the Steelers know an improved running game is part of the equation to improving the stagnant offense.
“He’s got a nice combination of size, strength and athleticism,” Tomlin said. “There’s not a lot of holes in his overall game.”
# 4 Can the pass rush remain dominant?
The Steelers became the first team in NFL history to lead the NFL in sacks in four consecutive seasons last year, and they did it by drafting and developing. Cam Heyward, T.J. Watt, pictired above, and Bud Dupree were first-round picks who worked hard to become elite players. Stephon Tuitt was a second-round pick and has similarly developed into a force in the middle of the defensive line.
Can the Steelers make it five in a row without Dupree? The success of the pass rush this year will hinge on the development of a more recent draft pick — 2020 third-round selection Alex Highsmith. He will step into a starting role in Dupree’s old spot. Highsmith recorded two sacks in 16 games last season, including five starts at the end of the year when Dupree exited the lineup with a knee injury. He has a long way to go to match what Dupree did the past three seasons. Dupree had 20 sacks in that span, and his presence on the right side of the defense helped Watt put up some monster numbers on the left side.
The Steelers planned for this. They knew they wouldn’t be able to afford Dupree and Watt in the long term. Now it’s Highsmith’s time to prove he can help the Steelers’ sack express keep going.
# 5 Who’s in the third corner?
While Bud Dupree is most certainly the biggest loss on the defense, the departure of nickel corner Mike Hilton should not be underestimated. Hilton held that job since the 2017 season and evolved into a versatile and valuable member of the defense. Hilton played well against the run and was used as a blitzer off the edge, contributing 9½ sacks the past four seasons. Nickel corners are basically starters, as Hilton played about two-thirds of the snaps when he was healthy last season.
The Steelers have not named a replacement, and there will be an open competition this summer to see who will fill that role. Antoine Brooks, Anthony Maulet and a few rookies are candidates, should the coaching staff want to keep Cam Sutton as an outside corner in all situations. If the coaches want to move Sutton to nickel corner when they go to subpackages, James Pierre, pictured above, and Justin Layne are candidates to play on the outside.
Pierre, who made the 53-man roster last year as an undrafted free agent, opened some eyes with his play during OTAs and minicamp.
“He’s big, he’s long, he runs,” secondary coach Teryl Austin said. “I think the biggest thing that stood out with James from last year was how hard he competed.”
If none the aforementioned players move the needle in camp, it will be up to general manager Kevin Colbert to pull off a trade or secure a viable option after final cut-downs. While the depth is concerning at outside linebacker, the winner of the third corner competition might have the biggest impact on the defense.