My girlfriend and I decided to head to Latrobe for Steelers training camp yesterday and it was a pretty good day.
It was family day for the players which made it harder to find parking. I didn't know it was a special day until afterwards but that probably explains all the people standing right there on the sidelines.
Last year, we went on a Tuesday and it wasn't too crowded and we sat in the bleachers, but yesterday, wow. It was a little tougher finding a good place to sit. Eventually, we found a decent, shady spot in the grass. We were in the end zone area between the 2nd and 3rd practice fields to the left of the dorms.
It was hard to really see a lot of stuff because most everything occurred on the opposite end of the fields, but I did see some things that stood out.
Daniel Sepulveda was consistently punting the ball 50plus yards and he looked to be only taking one-step instead of the traditional two. I don't know if that's the norm for him, but he looked to be in mid-season form. Of course, I guess it's easy to be in good form when nobody is trying to block your punt.
Rashard Mendenhall looked tremendous. The only pad-cracking hit that I heard was Rashard's collision with an unidentified defender. Rashard won that battle.
Mewelde Moore looked pretty good and he had a couple of plays that had the crowd cheering. I don't know if my opinion is a reaction to the crowd's reaction, but I do know that Moore was a key contributor to the team's Super Bowl season of '08. I've heard a lot of concern about the back-up running back slot, and for the life of me I can't figure out why Moore isn't the shoe-in for the role. He couldn't have lost that much in a two-year span. He has come up big for them a lot since he signed here. My bet is he'll do it again this season.
I was watching some one-on-one drills between the offensive and defensive linemen and Flozell Adams looked solid. Maybe I'm just saying that because I was paying special attention, but I didn't see him get beat once.
There was a defensive end named Ra'shon Harris who was very dynamic and impressed me a little bit in that drill. Keep an eye out for number 77 on the defensive side in the upcoming preseason games. I wouldn't be surprised if he turned some heads.
I was VERY impressed with Emmanuel Sanders yesterday. It's hard to judge receivers in practice, but he made a defensive back or two look silly.
Antonio Brown wasn't bad, either. Maybe the Steelers have found another receiving gem or two in this year's draft.
And my MVP for yesterday's practice was running back Justin Vincent. No, not because of anything he did on the field, but for what he did afterwards. There weren't a ton of people in the area where we were standing, but Vincent came over and signed a lot of autographs and posed for pictures. Nobody really knew who he was so he could have very easily walked back to the dorms and nobody would have noticed. My girlfriend was talking to a couple who said that Vincent was on the same plane as them a few weeks ago. He was flying up from Texas for training camp and he talked to their young son the entire flight. He told them that if they saw him to just yell out his name and he'd be glad to come over and talk to them.
I don't know if he'll make the team, but he really seems like a class-act.
Anyway, that's about all I can remember from our time at camp. A fun little day and a great way to end our vacation.
Can't wait to go back next year.
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