Welcome to the absolute best time of the year. It’s training camp week and this Thursday, the Pittsburgh Steelers will conduct their first St. Vincent practice to kick off the 2018 season.
The regular season is incredible. Postseason even better. And the draft is an awesome experience. But nothing beats camp. For Pittsburgh, and it’s sad teams are around the league are shying away from it, the chance to go to a location off the beaten path, Latrobe, far away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Pittsburgh. A time for the team to bond and come together, cramped in dorm rooms barely big enough to fit 300 pounders, and experience the day in, day out grind together.
As for us, the fans, a rare chance to watch this team up close. You can watch Antonio Brown hype up the crowd before practice, Vince Williams try to murder everyone, and it doesn’t cost $12 for a hot dog. So win all around. And for this site, a chance to share with you what happens at practice each day. We’ve been doing it for three years now and I’m thankful and grateful to you all for getting to do it for a fourth – and hopefully many more.
So as we usually do this time of year, we are setting up the Steelers Depot Training Camp tip jar. If you like the work we do, feel free to donate at the link here. But I do want to make one thing crystal clear. This isn’t money we need to get there. Like I’ve said for a couple years now, I’m going to camp no matter what and have no expectation or “goal” for these things (that’s why the goal is $1, as it’s been for all of these). It’s a tip jar, a donation, and one you certainly have no obligation to make if you don’t want to. Donate a little, donate a lot, don’t donate at all, you’ll still get the same great content no matter what. There are no paywalls on this site and our long-term commitment is to keep it that way. And I’ll certainly personally thank each person who donates (if I miss you, you have the go ahead to yell at me).
Please donate only if you can. Don’t feel bad if you can’t; I’d feel worse if you couldn’t but gave anyway, I promise. Can’t stress that enough. Pay your bills. Buy your cousin that birthday gift. Heck, order that Quesadilla Maker you’ve been eyeing on Amazon for the past month. All of it infinitely more important. But we appreciate the heck out of anyone kind enough to throw something our way.
I also want to thank a Steelers Depot recurring sponsor, Touring Plans, for their continued support of the website. If you are looking to take a trip to Disney, those are the people you want to go through. Len Testa has been a great friend of the site.
This offseason has definitely felt more boring than the rest, at least until the Le’Veon Bell news, and for a Steelers fan, that’s a good thing. Less drama, less chaos, less players in the news, the better off the team is. But it’s made me as anxious for camp as I’ve ever been before. There’s only so many times you can write articles on “Top 1 Players Named Ben Roethlisberger.”
If you’re new to the site or haven’t spent a camp with us, each evening after practice, we’ll write out a report from the day’s events. A play-by-play of the team sessions and a good chunk of what happens in one on ones. Dave and I will sit down for a 20-30 minute podcast most nights with some exceptions (there won’t be one after Friday Night Lights, for example). Here’s an example of one of our post-practice reports.
Dave will share some of the top stories throughout the day and keep you up-to-date with the injury report and daily interview with Mike Tomlin. Be sure to keep his Twitter feed bookmarked, @Steelersdepot, and mine, @Alex_Kozora. Tim Rice, you can find his Twitter here, will be in camp for several days to shoot some amazing photos and bring you closer to the action.
I hope you enjoy our work as much as we enjoy getting to bring it to you all. And we’ll do our absolute best to interact with you all, on here and Twitter, during camp. Know it’s a time where you guys have a ton of questions.
In an hour from the time this posts, I’ll have published a depth chart prediction heading into camp. Later in the week, I’ll write up a Day One What to Watch For and a pre-training camp roster prediction before the real fun begins.
We have 15 practices to cover. I can’t wait to share the experience with the rest of Steelers Nation. Thank you all.
Again, if you’d like to leave a tip, you can click the link here.
