Saturday, day eleven of training camp for the Pittsburgh Steelers is now in the books and this will serve as your daily recap of reports from around the web.
Injury wise, Isaac Redman (groin) and guard Willie Colon (ankle) were sidelined after getting dinged up Friday night. Redman reportedly helped out with individual drills and head coach Mike Tomlin termed both day-to-day when he met the media. John Clay (groin) was back in action on Saturday and reportedly looked fine.
Ben Roethlisberger (ankle) had his left foot stepped on late in practice and finished the session standing on the sideline with an ice pack wrapped around his ankle. Tomlin did not deem the injury serious after practice and reiterated that the quarterback only had his foot stepped on. Before limping off the quarterback threw a touchdown pass to Emmanuel Sanders in the red zone drill according to Mike Prisuta.
Linebackers Ryan Baker (ankle) and Brandon Johnson (ankle) both suffered some sort of ankle injuries on Saturday according to Tomlin.
With Colon sidelined, Ramon Foster received the first team reps at left guard and David DeCastro ran with the first team at right guard. Mike Adams appears to have overtaken Trai Essex now at left tackle as he reportedly received most of the first team work. Tomlin said after practice that Adams has earned those first team reps and that DeCastro represented himself well, but that he was not focused in on him specifically today. They will look at the film tonight on him. Tomlin did say that Adams is far from ready though.
“He’s been doing a nice job of representing himself,” said Tomlin of DeCastro. “We’ll see where it goes. I wasn’t looking at him directly. I was looking at everyone, so I don’t really have a fair assessment of his performance particularly in that area today with the first team. We’ll take a look at it tonight.”
In the 11-on-11 drills Chris Rainey had a nice run around the corner for a touchdown as he continues his string camp. Ike Taylor reportedly had some great battles with Antonio Brown today. Sanders of course was back on the field after sitting out Friday night and looked healthy per the reports. Todd Haley had to get on both Derrick Williams and Marquis Maze for lining up out of position. David Gilreath reportedly made a nice one-handed catch during the session.
It was reported that Rainey, Maze, Baron Batch, Jonathan Dwyer and continue to get reps in the return department and I would expect that to continue into the preseason as the team already knows what they have in both Brown and Sanders.
Today was the first time the goal-line drill took place and Prisuta scored the defense the winner 4-3 over the offense. The defense also reportedly won the 3rd-and-1 drill according to Prisuta as well. Touchdowns for the offense were scored by Clay, Dwyer and Leonard Pope. The Pope touchdown came on a play action pass from Byron Leftwich that was reportedly run in attempt to keep the second team defense honest. The Clay touchdown reportedly was scored with him flying over the top of the pile.
In the goal-line and 3rd-and-1 defense the Steelers used included Chris Carter and Adrian Robinson at the outside linebacker spots with Cortez Allen and Keenan Lewis manning the cornerback spots. At safety were Will Allen and Ryan Mundy.
