LATROBE, Pa. -- No idea what precipitated it. No idea who pushed whose proverbial button. No idea how they'd made peace, either, presuming they ever did.
But there was George Pickens, soon after the Steelers had started up drills from scrimmage amid their first practice of training camp on this steamy Thursday at Saint Vincent College, animatedly reacting to something between snaps by shoving the team's new wide receivers coach, Zach Azzanni, a stride or so backward. To which Azzanni stood his ground and shoved right back. To which both exchanged some words before walking toward the sideline together:
DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS
And know what's nuts?
That doesn't even come close to summarizing how much of this feel there was across the place. And not just because Pickens and Azzanni, a spirited sort who was hired after a year with the Jets to bring some dreadfully overdue discipline to this particular positional room, would again be in each other's faces later in the session.
This was ...
"It's real," Pat Freiermuth would tell me. "For a lot of guys. For all of us."
Good. It should be.
Because if it isn't bad enough that Cam Heyward's never won a Super Bowl, how about that T.J. Watt's never won a bleeping playoff game?
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Understand, please, I'm not talking about the standard the-temperature-got-a-little-high kinda stuff at camp. That's not this at all. Nobody's putting on pads until early next week, and nobody's truly testing anyone's testosterone level until then.
No, this is about a setting in which, for one reason or another, Player X is dealing with this individual issue, Player X is dealing with that individual issue, the franchise as a whole's following in some form or other Art Rooney's striking statement in January that, "We've had enough of this," referring to zero playoff victories since 2016. "It's time to get some wins. It's time to take these next steps."
And collectively, at least for the day, it came across as ... uncomfortable?
Yeah, that's the right term.
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Azzanni arrives as advertised.
Five years ago, old friend Emmanual Sanders would say of his shared time with Azzanni in Denver, “Oh yeah, we butted heads at the beginning. Obviously, the new coach coming in, he has his ways, and I have my ways of doing it—it took me to two Super Bowls and two Pro Bowls. We butt heads, but at the end of the day we have a common goal: We want to win. I’ve been listening to him, he’s been listening to me, and it's starting to pay off because, like he always tells me, ‘You can get better. You know that, right?’ And I’m like, ‘OK, OK.’ "
I'll reiterate that I don't -- and can't know -- what happened out there, much less why, between Pickens and Azzanni. But our beat writer, Chris Halicke, and I both saw the same thing right in front of us at field level, we both had the same eyebrows-up response.
In one capacity, it's not surprising. I reported in Friday Insider nearly a year ago that management was down on Frisman Jackson, Azzanni's predecessor as wide receivers coach, in large part because he couldn't control his room. That even influenced the free-agency signing of veteran Allen Robinson, I was told, to serve as baby-sitter.
Well, the sitter's been replaced.
Before a subsequent drill, Azzanni, a stickler for detail, glanced back from the field to find a few of his idle receivers' toes had straddled across the sideline. He pointed them back where they belong, and there they went ... by 6 inches at most.
Pickens didn't meet with reporters afterward.
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For all the proper fuss over the contractual futures of Cam Heyward and Najee Harris, I'd argue that the most pivotal such scenario in the moment would be Freiermuth's. He's entering the final year of his rookie that'll pay $1,482,025, a relative pittance for a starting tight end in the NFL, never mind one who's supposed to be the centerpiece of this new Arthur Smith offense.
I'll spare everyone the saga and simply share that Freiermuth thinks a lot more of what he can offer a team than what he's been allowed to show since being drafted. Not even Travis Kelce can catch a football that isn't flung his way, and Smith's predecessor at coordinator wouldn't have been able to find Kelce on a field if he were carrying Taylor Swift around on his shoulders.
Freiermuth was everywhere on this day. He was out wide. In the slot. Up against the line. He went left and right, short and deep. And on his signature catch of the day, he'd sprint 20 yards out, cut toward the sideline and leap up for this slick throw from Kyle Allen:
Nice snag from Mr.88 Muth. pic.twitter.com/2D3zErauRK
— Baku 🐧 (@Mazursky8895) July 25, 2024
Nice, huh?
I had to be the one to ask how often he's run a pattern like that in his NFL career:
"Not a whole lot," he'd deadpan. "But I'm looking forward to doing some new things this year."
He can be so politically correct when he wants.
Dude's so, so stoked for this. Determined, too. Whether the Steelers sign him or not -- and there've been no meaningful extension talks this summer -- the ball won't be all that's coming his way.
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Very first snap from scrimmage. Najee Harris motioned to the left. Then to the right. Then to ... wait, is there a third direction?
Smith, observing from behind quarterback, raised both arms to reset the entire sequence. This time with Harris left off to the side. Had this been real, there'd have been yellow laundry all over the place.
"You know, starts aren't always ideal," Mike Tomlin would broach on his own afterward. "But that's like life, man. We all like to start with great fluidity and to be clean, but football isn't always like that."
So just as I'm continuing the line of thought from yesterday's column about how Harris being genuinely unhappy about his contract status might have some ripple effect, Pickens lines up pretty much uncovered in the slot, and Harris, who's not part of this snap begins screaming and jumping up and down, "Oh! Oh! OH! OHHHHH!" And once the ball's snapped, then thrown on a short slant to Pickens, everything that Harris had envisioned played out, as Pickens sprinted off for six. With Harris chasing him the whole way down the field, still exclaiming as he embraced Pickens.
The fans loved it. Laughed out loud through it all.
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To the other financial matter: I spoke briefly with Heyward. Still no progress. Still no change in his stance that, even at age 35, he'll rate among the elite at his position and should be compensated as much.
I semi-joked with the big man that he needs to get this done, to which he'd no-joke respond, "Tell them, not me."
Good for him. No reason to undersell himself at this stage of his under-appreciated career.
He'll be something once the pads are donned, huh?
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His brother wasn't having much of a day, either.
Connor Heyward, competing for tight end duty despite not really being a tight end, was stripped of the ball after an early catch, then showed such bad body language that Tomlin walked over to Alfredo Roberts, the tight ends coach, to advise that Roberts tell his player not to be "emotional and stupid," clearly not separating those concepts in this context.
Within a few minutes, Heyward was getting stretched out for a cramped right calf.
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Justin Fields received a text at 6:30 a.m. telling him he'd take first-team reps. Russell Wilson, the pole-position quarterback, had woken up with a nagging calf of his own and, as Tomlin would explain, "It was my decision to sit him down today. ... He wanted to go, and he was probably capable, but I'm getting to know him, and I just chose to create a little misery for him and the offensive unit."
So Tomlin.
See this whole list I'm stringing out?
Nobody loves it like that guy. He feasts off manufacturing scenarios that he feels present fresh challenges. Even for a 35-year-old lifelong franchise quarterback wearing a Super Bowl ring.
"But on the flip side of that," as Tomlin continued, "it was an awesome opportunity for Justin."
Yep. And I'm sensing at least a small signal that he's not about to anoint anyone at the most important position, but we'll see.
I'll say right now, though, that Fields didn't waste the opportunity, as Van Jefferson can attest:
Wow perfectly placed deep ball for a Van Jefferson touchdown. pic.twitter.com/8ZYtvomPD0
— Baku 🐧 (@Mazursky8895) July 25, 2024
"I didn't really change my thought process," Fields would say of the opportunity. "I just prepare myself to be there for my teammates."
Mm-hm. So when Wilson later stepped out to the 50 after most everyone else had cleared and began tossing, so did Fields. And when Wilson later walked over toward the bleachers to sign autotographs, Fields walked to another section to do likewise.
Facing the Nation 'n' at.
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The rookies weren't being anointed, either. Not right away, anyway.
Other than Payton Wilson taking some first-team snaps at inside linebacker alongside Patrick Queen -- no one from the summer's draft class received such reps. Calvin Austin was WR2 behind Pickens, and not Roman Wilson. Dan Moore was back at left tackle, Broderick Jones at right, and not Troy Fautanu. Nate Herbig was at center, and not Zach Frazier. I do expect there'll be change there as camp proceeds, but that's how it was here.
Fits with the edge theme, too.
When I asked Jones if he'd been told that he'll play right or his natural left, he'd shrug and reply, "I don't know. Haven't been told. Just gonna do my job, do my best wherever they put me."
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Remember all that excitement from this corner of the world a year ago?
Remember what all that wound up meaning?
I'm not inclined to pass out figurative pats on the back to Tomlin or anyone else for some of the changes since the Steelers last lumbered off that snow-caked surface in Orchard Park. Because change becomes a must once straddling the wrong threshold. The wide receivers should've had a better coach. The camp sessions being moved to the morning could've been considered. The competition that's being created could've been pursued more aggressively. Heck, even the contract squabbles would've been preferable to everyone being all cozy.
This is the beginning, and nothing more. But I don't mind seeing it begin with a bunch of bad moods.
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