Rookie minicamp is the first step in the process for many young players in the NFL. All of the draft picks, tryout players, and undrafted free agents take the field for the first time together to begin to learn the playbook and start to compete for a roster spot or a role on the team. It is football in shorts season, so you can only learn so much from these sessions, but head coach Mike Tomlin spoke to the media after practice on Saturday and described what he watches for at these first practices.
“I’m looking for a lot of things, to be quite honest with you,” Tomlin said via a video posted on the Steelers’ website. “How people take in information. How they retain information. Some physical things, how their body works, and levels of conditioning. Things that are really critical in terms of getting to know these guys and building a program individually for them to get them ready for Latrobe.”
The session that is available to the media and all the clips that we have seen from the first two days of practice are from the walk-through sessions. There is a separate session later in the day that is closed to the media, but it is the first opportunity for the coaches to work with these players and teach them the basics so they have a foundation to build on throughout the offseason.
Tomlin specifically spoke about first-round OT Troy Fauntanu’s level of conditioning and how that is a great starting point for him early in the process.
As for the information processing component of the evaluation at these practices, Zach Frazier spoke earlier about getting himself ready. He said they just received the playbooks within the last four or five days. They haven’t had the last few weeks since the draft to prepare. Rookie minicamp is really throwing them into the deep end to see how they do, and that might be by design to help the coach’s evaluations.
Here is a clip of WR Roman Wilson from Friday’s practices, taking instruction from WR coach Zach Azzanni for one of the first times via Brooke Pryor on X. This is what rookie minicamp is all about.
