Only Tyler Matakevich, with those burned locks flowing over a sweat-stained bandana over crimson-bordering-on-purple cheeks, all wrapped in a Yosemite Sam beard ... yeah, only the man they call Dirty Red could have made it feel even warmer than the 92 degrees already scorching the Rooney Sports Complex.
"Crazy, right?" he'd tell me, still standing out in that sun after the Steelers' latest OTA session Tuesday. "Not exactly football weather, is it?"
Nope. But one wouldn't know from the big, gap-toothed grin housed by all of the above.
Matakevich is a "gamer," as Vince Williams calls him. He's football to the wall. A 6-foot-1, 235-pound ball of fire, both in personality and performance. The seventh-rounder who would throw himself in front of an 18-wheeler to make a special-teams tackle. And if he should happen to open the 2018 NFL season aligned next to Williams as one of the Steelers' starting inside linebackers, where he's been through all four OTA sessions now, not a soul among them will be surprised.
Neither, apparently, will he.
Asked if the position's his to lose, Matakevich, unblinking, came back, "Absolutely. I mean, you've just got to show up every day, come in ready to work, and that’s it. Just get better. That’s all you really can focus on is yourself, know what I mean?”
He then quickly interjected, "I mean, everyone knows you don't earn a spot in OTAs. It happens in Latrobe. So, it's nice now, but when everyone gets the pads on, that's when the real camp starts.”
Yeah, but he's the one out there. Not Jon Bostic, a veteran free-agent signee who filled that role with the Colts last fall. And no, not either of the two new, hybrid-type safeties, Morgan Burnett, another veteran free-agent signee, and Terrell Edmunds, the first-round draft pick. That might be because Matakevich obviously would know the defense far better than Bostic, or because Mike Tomlin and Keith Butler wouldn't be eager to show a dramatic defensive switch in OTAs.
So it's somewhat reasonable to say, for now, that this is real.
And that leaves me ... eh.
I raised a couple of my own questions with the man himself:
Matakevich makes for an easy target. Barely made the cut in the draft. Undersized. Underwhelming speed. And the one chance he had to make a major impact, the night in Cincinnati that Ryan Shazier was hurt, he was out later in the same game and severely limited the rest of the way. For the season, he finished with nine whole tackles on 60 whole snaps.
What's to like, right?
Well, hang on. To be fair, as Matakevich acknowledged for the first time Tuesday, he tore the labrum in his left shoulder way back in the season's sixth week, Oct. 15 at Kansas City, when landing weirdly after dropping into coverage on this touchdown pass by the Chiefs:
Damage also was done to his rotator cuff and biceps. And three days after the Steelers were eliminated from the playoffs by the Jaguars, Matakevich had surgery on the shoulder. That, too, had not been known before Tuesday, as it had long been assumed the aggravation of the injury in Cincinnati had been the bigger deal.
Now, he isn't limited in any way, even if it's just football in shorts.
"I've got a new wing, so I feel good,” Matakevich said, beaming as he playfully raised the right -- and uninjured -- shoulder for some reason. “I played the whole year with pretty much a bum arm."
He wasn't very efficient, either. When he did get back on the field, runners routinely spun right through him like a turnstile, and the Steelers as a whole gave up more than 100 rushing yards to all five of their final opponents except for the Browns.
“If I'm healthy, I think, it's a different story. I only had one arm, so it's a little tough. You knew on special teams you could sort of protect yourself. I'd know who was going to block me, so I just wouldn’t give them my shoulder. Whereas, on defense, you really can’t protect yourself out there. It would end up just popping out. In the first half, I'd be tackling guys. In the second half, a guy would just touch me and my shoulder came out.”
Tomlin, Colbert and Jerry Olsavsky are privy to a ton more info than we are. There has to be something they see beyond the limited snaps we've seen, beyond even practices. It's probably worth trusting them.
But there's one more thing, too.
“I’ve been counted out my whole life, you know?" Matakevich said. "That’s why I've got this chip on my shoulder.”
Presumably the repaired shoulder this time.
• Speaking of guys who were too hurt to stop the run late in the season, Stephon Tuitt must have used the term 'setback' 91 times in our talk after practice. He was referring, of course, to the partially torn biceps that kept him from being anywhere near his best against the Jaguars.
"In my mind, I had a setback last season, so now I've got to make up for it," the big man told me. "I always want to be better than last year, and that setback is what's on my mind. I'm going to give it everything I've got to put it behind me."
So why focus on it at all?
"I set my expectations really high last year. I feel like I was getting to where I wanted to be. Then I had the setback. I want to come back and answer for that."
Yes, please. The Steelers' offense has been explosive at times since Heath Miller left, but it's never had the same rhythm as when Miller and Hines Ward were primary mid-range options for Ben Roethlisberger. My main criticism of Todd Haley's tenure has been precisely that, a lack of imagination combined with a lack of a general feel.
That's not to suggest Vance McDonald or Jesse James can replace Miller, not even if they were melded into a single sentient being. But they can work together to make the tight end position more valuable than a decoy.
• The Pirates aren't exactly overflowing in the guts department these days, are they?
• There's nothing more misguided than any notion that Nick Kingham should have thrown at Anthony Rizzo last night. That ship had sailed multiple nautical miles away. It sailed the moment Richard Rodriguez shrunk from protecting his batterymate, Elias Diaz, 24 hours earlier.
• Rodriguez is a lousy teammate until he proves otherwise. That burden's on him. The only way the Pirates' culture gets fully healthy -- and believe me, it was there before this recent 2-9 run -- is if they have faith in each other. And words won't be enough. Neither will a short time.
• Joe Maddon's full of it.
Not talking about his phony, manufactured stance on Rizzo's filthy slide. Just talking about his delivery. Comes across like the lowest stereotype of a used car salesman, except that he would go broke in that capacity.
• That said, it's positively spectacular that he condescends to Pittsburgh fans about not understanding baseball's rules, only to be symbolically admonished the next day by Joe Torre that they were right and the genius was wrong.
• Rizzo's a dirty player. The Pittsburgh fans are right about that, too, and there's a wealth of video evidence of other such slides to support it. Maddon's slick, but he's not stupid. He knew that, which is why he protested so hotly in the initial moment. It's a manager trying to protect his player's rep.
• Barry Trotz does the same thing with Tom Wilson. Draw any further links you'd like.
• It's commonly spoken around here that our city doesn't pay attention to the Stanley Cup playoffs once the Penguins are out. Well, the overnight ratings from NBC for Game 1 of the Final would powerfully suggest otherwise, as Pittsburgh was third in the country with an outstanding 10.31 rating. Only the two participating cities were higher, Las Vegas at 28.08 and Washington at 16.02.
Here you go:
.@Capitals @GoldenKnights series resonating. Following markets had their BEST local rating for a Gm1 on NBC in which their team was not playing: Buf (8.84), Chi (4.02), Dallas (2.45), LA (3.23), Minny (6.58), Nash (4.11), Pitt (10.31), SaltLake (3.30), StL (5.22), Tampa (4.02)
— NBC Sports PR (@NBCSportsPR) May 29, 2018
It was the highest rating in Pittsburgh ever for a Game 1 in which the Penguins weren't playing.
It also drew a higher local rating than the NBA's Game 7 of the Western Final on at the same time.
And a higher local rating than the Pirates-Cubs game earlier in the day.
Sure, Marc-Andre Fleury's playing for Vegas, but he's been there for nearly a year now, and other Vegas games in these playoffs haven't drawn well. One game from the Vegas-Winnipeg series didn't crack a 3.0 locally.
No, this one drew, if you ask me, because hockey fans were excited to see exactly what they wound up getting: High-level entertainment between two fast-paced teams with a whole lot of fun, attached storylines on both sides. Which is how it's supposed to work when a lot of people tune in for professional sports.
• Alas, I won't be contributing to those ratings tonight. I'll be back at the ballpark for the Pirates-Cubs finale.
• Thanks, as always, for reading. I don't say that often enough.
