Pittsburgh Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey was a guest on SiriusXM Radio on Thursday along with his twin brother Mike Pouncey of the Miami Dolphins and he talked about the two talked their off-season and the upcoming season in addition.
As far as how his offseason is going, Maurkice, who is entering his fourth season in the league, was as positive as ever.
“It\’s going great,” said Maurkice. “We had the opportunity to have all of the offensive line get up there early and kind of get after it. Trying to build the chemistry and hope we stay injury free this year.”
The Pouncey twins are considered to be perhaps the most athletic centers in the league and both were asked to talk about their athleticism and the advantage that it gives them.
“I think we\’re blessed with athletic ability that we have in our family,” said Maurkice. “I think with our teams, they use it at a high advantage for us to get around there and get up on guys very quickly and I think it helps out our offense a lot whenever you got guys who can really move like that.
“Especially with us this year trying to go to the outside zone scheme with the Pittsburgh Steelers. I think we got the offensive line to do it this year and we really plan on attacking it at these OTA\’s.”
The Steelers addressed the running game head on this offseason when they drafted running back Le\’Veon Bell out of Michigan State in the second round of the draft last month and Maurkice was asked to talk about his new teammate.
“I think its he\’s going to be exceptional,” said Maurkice. “He came in, he was 250 in college, he came into rookie mini camp at 234 and they say with him running around the edge being an outside zone player that he can be with the power that he brings, I think its really going to help us out.
“Like I said earlier, with the offensive line buying in, with the outside zone schemes really working in the NFL, you see a lot of backs are successful with it, with Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, I think that\’ll be a big help to our offense this year.”
Maurkice certainly referred to the outside zone quite as bit during his interview, and while we knew we would see more zone blocking in 2013, perhaps we will see a lot more of it.
