Usually better than everyone else
Bouchette made his mark on Steelers coverage
“Keep that water coming.” That’s what Ed Bouchette would say every time we wrapped up what we affectionately called “Car Karaoke,” a Facebook Live feature that typically included Ed, myself, Gene Collier and Ray Fittipaldo musing about the Steelers while we traveled by car the day before a road game for the Post-Gazette.
The feature was sponsored by Evoqua Water Technologies, a Pittsburgh-based global company that provides solutions to keep water safe for municipalities and industrial customers. The company’s slogan was, “Transforming Water, Enriching Life,” which we were required by sponsorship to recite at least once during our presentation.
But at the end of one of our 15to 20-minute presentations, and even though we would have already read the required slogan, Ed would invariably conclude our segment and sign off by saying, “keep that water coming,” even though the company’s purpose had nothing to do with providing water. They weren’t the Culligan Man, after all.
That was Ed Bouchette. He did things his way and, just as invariably, did it better than everyone else.
Ed retired on May 3 after 50 years in the newspaper business, 36 covering the Steelers for the Post-Gazette. He spent the last three years of his decorated career with The Athletic. In a city that has seen a number of quality beat writers covering the Steelers, he was the best. You could read him in the paper, hear him on the radio, watch him on TV.
Ed could sniff out a story the way a bloodhound could find a soup bone. It’s one of the reasons he received numerous awards and honors, none bigger than when the Pro Football Hall of Fame presented him with the Dick McCann Award in 2014 for long-time and meritorious excellence covering the NFL. He was so highly respected by the team he covered that the late Steelers chairman, Dan Rooney, made it a tradition before every game to come to the press box and talk with him.
There was always something entertaining about Ed. He even had his own walk-up music for when he appeared on SiriusXM Radio, a catchy little tune that would rhythmically intone, “Ed Bouchette from the PostGazette.” They played it the other day when he appeared for possibly the last time.
Ed and I go back a long way, long before we spent countless days in cars, airports, planes, press boxes and restaurants covering the Steelers together for the Post-Gazette. After he left the Indiana Gazette and before he went to the Greensburg Tribune Review, Ed worked at the McKeesport Daily News when I helped out in the sports department as a college student.
With the advent of websites and a desire for expanded online presence, we became inextricably linked when we began doing postgame videos from the field after every Steelers game for post-gazette.com.
To this day, it is doubtful any video comes close to matching what happened in Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 2011, the calamitous night the lights went out twice at the old dump and interrupted a “Monday Night Football” game for a total of 35 minutes.
After the game, while we were doing our video on the field and talking about the bizarre occurrences, the lights went out again, almost on cue, as though it were part of some comedy skit. It left Ed and me and our videographer, Pete Diana, in total darkness.
Without missing a beat, Ed reached in his pocket, pulled out his cell phone and used the flashlight on the phone to illuminate us. We finished the video under the light of his phone. It might not have been high quality, but it was must-see.
That was Ed Bouchette. Always finding a way to tell the story, usually better than everyone else.
Kids are getting older
It might not be a trend by the Steelers, not like always wanting to take a player from a Power Five school with their No. 1 pick.
But it might be a subconscious effort to get more mature players.
Whatever it is, the average age of their draft choices has slowly risen the past five years. Consider:
The seven picks in this year’s draft class have an average age of 22.85 years, topped by first-round choice Kenny Pickett, who will be 24 when the season starts; and seventh-round pick QB Chris Oladokun, who will be 25 on Sept. 3.
That is almost 1½ years older than the 2018 draft class in which four of the seven players selected were 21, headed by top pick Terrell Edmunds, and the average age was 21.57.
Since then, the average age has risen slowly, though the biggest jump occurred from 2019, when the average age was 21.8, to 2020, when the average was 22.83. That was because two players — guard Kevin Dotson and nose tackle Carlos Davis — were 24 before the season started.
Of the eight players drafted in 2021, six were 22 and only two were 23 — top pick Najee Harris and fifth- round choice Isaiahh Loudermilk — when the season started. The average age was 22.25.
What does all that mean? Well, probably nothing. But it is noteworthy that two rookie quarterbacks will be just a couple years in age behind Mitch Trubisky and Mason Rudolph, who have been in the league a combined 11 years.