We’re talking about practice: Steelers’ OTA overrated
Could the Steelers and other NFL teams be properly prepared for a season without the 10 days of football in shorts? The Steelers will wrap up their 10 days next week, but the last day usually is football without football with a team bonding exercise that usually includes video games.
OTA, in case you’ve forgotten, stands for organized team activity. Organized team activity, in case you’ve forgotten, is practice. Or video study. Or both. Mike Tomlin is only allowed to have them for six hours a day and there is no contact permitted. And it’s voluntary.
The first regular season game is only three months away and that means they have to get right back to work June 12 through the 14th in mini-camp.
The biggest difference between OTA and mini-camp is that the organized team activity at mini-camp is mandatory.
Tomlin can keep them at Steelers headquarters for 10½ hours during mini-camp but they can’t spend more than three and a half hours on the field per day.
You don’t think he’d make them watch six hours of video after lunch, do you?
After mini-camp everybody gets six weeks off then it’s training camp in Latrobe. Two more weeks of practice in full pads before they actually play a game.
Of course, the game is a preseason game – also known as a practice game – and most of the important players won’t play. The fans get to practice their tailgating and Terrible Towel waving.
Though most of the actual season-ticket holders have become smart enough to find someone dumb enough to use their tickets. Real season-ticket holders don’t need to practice tailgating.
So, after four weeks of practice games, the Steelers will have one more week of practice before opening the regular season Sept. 9 in Cleveland.
You could make a fairly good case for a game against an 0-16 team also being a practice game, but let’s not be too unkind to the Browns.
They’re trying.
With a few days off during training camp, that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 days of practice before the first game.
Do you think that’s enough?
After all, the Browns could have gone 0-16 with no practice.
If the Steelers had decided to skip OTAs last year, would they have still finished 13-3?
If the Browns had managed to work in an extra week of illegal OTAs or illegally worn shoulder pads during mini-camp, would they have won a game?
It’s a good thing Alan Iverson didn’t play football.
- Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown have missed all but the first day of OTAs. NBC Sports Network’s Pro Football Talk, where they also needed practice to get ready for the regular season 100 days away, spent eight minutes analyzing the effect of the two Steelers and Le’Veon Bell not being at OTAs. Analyst Chris Simms was asked his level of concern on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most concerned, and he gave it a three.
Roethlisberger had the nerve to take a family vacation. If that puts your level of concern at a nine or a 10, my sources telling me that Ben’s son was running a lot of routes on the beach and Ben was throwing the ball really well, should lower that to a five or a six. I’m told he was in mini-camp form. Ben, I mean. Not sure about his son.
And if that doesn’t settle your nerves, you can rest easy in the knowledge that Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski skipped the Patriots OTAs.
- Bruce Kison died Friday. He was 68. You have to be almost that old to appreciate what he did for the Pirates in the 1971 World Series. He was a ridiculously skinny 21-year old rookie who pitched 6
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- scoreless innings in relief against an Orioles team that was loaded with great hitters. That included an appearance in the first night game in World Series history.
He also won 13 games for the Pirates’ World Series winner in 1979.
Kison was 6-4 and only about 170 pounds, but he quickly became known as one of the toughest pitchers in the National League. He’d plunk you as soon as look at you. What separated him from most other guys was his willingness to stand his ground after he hit you. He had a famous one-on-one fight with Mike Schmidt of the Phillies. He invited Schmidt to visit him on the mound after hitting him and Schmidt took him up on it.
- I don’t know how I ever developed the love of baseball that I once had without knowing the exit velocity of batted balls. We only had our eyes and ears to tell us how hard a ball was hit.
I have a feeling there will be some exit velocity records set by Pirates fans leaving games at PNC Park early before this season is over.
- You’ll have to excuse me for spending so much time on OTAs this week, but I needed the practice.