The Pittsburgh Steelers completed their eighth OTA practice of 2019 on Wednesday and after the session at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex was over and done with, one of the team’s former first-round draft picks, outside linebacker T.J. Watt, was asked to give a quick progress report on this year’s first-round draft pick, inside linebacker Devin Bush.
“Yeah, he’s not the biggest guy, but he definitely does walk with a presence and he walks with a purpose and he’s taking a good role in knowing all the plays and being able to call some plays for us,” Watt said of Bush. “And he is quicker than snot and he’s been flying around making a lot of good plays, so I’m excited for him.”
Quicker than snot is quite an analogy for Bush by Watt, but a very descriptive one nonetheless. After all, one would hope that Bush is indeed viewed by his Steelers teammates as being that kind of quick after he registered a 4.43-second time in the 40 yard-dash at this year’s scouting combine in addition to a short-shuttle time of 4.23-seconds and a three-cone time 6.93-seconds.
Watt was also asked if he thinks Bush seems comfortable with calling plays so far during the team’s OTA practices and once again the Michigan product received a good review from his defensive teammate out of Wisconsin.
“Yeah. I mean he seems really comfortable,” Watt said. “Nothing out of the ordinary for me. It’s just like anyone else in there calling plays. So, he’s doing a good job.”
For whatever it’s worth, Steelers backup quarterback Joshua Dobbs also gave a positive update on Bush’s progress during OTA practices when he talked to the media at the end of Wednesday session.
“I know Bush has been doing well,” Dobbs said. “He’s, of course, been thrown into the first-team reps and he’s responded really well and he’s playing fast.”
The Steelers will wrap up their 2019 OTA practices on Thursday and then start getting ready for next week’s mandatory minicamp. Sometime during next week we hopefully will get hear from Jerry Olsavsky, the team’s inside linebacker coach, and thus get his thoughts on how Bush has done so far during the team’s offseason practices. Outside of the young inside linebacker needing to be a bit more vocal when it comes to him calling the defense, it sounds like he’s making tremendous progress during the football in shorts sessions and that’s about all one can ask for right now.
Here’s to Bush staying quicker than snot and getting a lot louder as the summer continues on.
