It has been believed for some time now that Pittsburgh Steelers rookies David DeCastro and Alameda Ta\’amu would miss the entire slate of offseason OTA and mini-camp sessions and that Mike Adams would only make the mid-June mini-camp because of school requirements. Ed Bouchette reports today via his blog that he was told on Tuesday that those three players can attend once their course work ends, not necessarily when the semester ends.
Bouchette goes on to speculate that Adams could possibly be able to attend the third and final OTA session next week, and that all three could very well end up being able to attend the mini-camp the following week. Even if this all falls through and Bouchette was given bad information, Adams and Ta\’amu should at the very least be able to attend the June mini-camp as both Ohio State and Washington have commencement dates of June 8-10. The Stanford commencement dates are June 14-17.
This may all come down to the date that both Adams and Ta\’amu take their finals on as to whether or not either are able to attend the final OTA session. Washington shows that their final exams are June 4-8 and Ohio State shows that their finals run June 4-7.
So what this all mean right now? We wait and see if Adams and Ta\’amu are present next Tuesday unless we get a more definitive word on each. While it is just football in shorts, it is football and on-the-field learning nonetheless and rookies can always benefit from that prior to training camp getting underway.
Stay tuned!
