There won't be photos. There won't be video. There won't even be an affirmation from the head coach.
But two of the Steelers' brightest stars, Chase Claypool and Minkah Fitzpatrick, engaged in a spirited fight following a play in the end zone near the end of practice Monday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, as confirmed by multiple players. And that fight led into "a pile" of participants, as confirmed by one player.
The confirmation is necessary to cite in the reporting because of NFL guidelines that severely restrict what credentialed media can share publicly from practices. And even though that guideline's in place to prevent the divulging of strategy, it applies across the board. Even if an event is viewed in plain sight, as this was by more than a dozen outlets, including DK Pittsburgh Sports.
I attempted to confirm it through Mike Tomlin, and all I got was this:
I asked Mike Tomlin about this just now, and this was as far as I got: pic.twitter.com/BrVZy7r9v4
— Dejan Kovacevic (@Dejan_Kovacevic) August 30, 2021
"Yeah, I have no idea what you're referring to," Tomlin replied, looking right at me through sunglasses and nodding knowingly. He wasn't about to go any further, so nothing else was posed on that specific subject.
Tomlin did confirm he spoke to the team afterward, but added only, "I'll keep that between myself and them. You know, we talk openly about this process, where we are in it, what we need to do to improve daily. We assess days. Sometimes, we assess it on site as opposed to waiting the next day because immediate feedback sometimes is needed."
Like I said directly to Tomlin after his answer to me ... OK.
Three players were made available, per a previous plan -- Tyson Alualu, Chris Wormley and Kevin Dotson -- and all acknowledged the fight.
“I just saw a big pile. I didn’t really see what went on,” Dotson would say. “You come out here, and you’re pretty much fighting a person for two hours. Eventually, something might happen. That’s been happening since Little League.”
He was asked about Claypool and Fitzpatrick.
“If you’re going to compete, competitors are going to fight. They’re two of our biggest competitors. So I kind of almost expect it to happen at least once.”
“Everyone’s ready to play someone else, other than preseason,” Wormley said. “Sometimes that’s part of football. But as a whole, we want to stick together as a team and let that stuff go. I think those two guys will make up, and they’ll carry on and prepare for Buffalo in Week 1.”
Alualu affirmed that Tomlin's talk was about avoiding such incidents in the future to avoid injury, with an emphasis on the season opener being Sept. 12 against the Bills in Orchard Park, N.Y.
“I think we’re still in that training camp mode where there's that competitive edge, people getting chippy,” Alualu said. “I think it’s just part of the game. I don’t think it’s anything you have to look into. It’s part of football. But we understand we don’t want — especially our star players, we don’t want anyone getting hurt. We’ve got to be more smart.”
Also confirmed by all concerned: Chuks Okorafor switched from left tackle to right with the first team, and rookie Dan Moore was at left tackle. Zach Banner didn't practice at all.
I'll be writing a full 10 Takes column on all this and more, but I wanted to get a news file up first.
