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Steelers Spring Time, Team Building, Brown Money

By Kim Myers

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The Pittsburgh Steelers heading back out onto the practice field for the third week of OTAs where the rookie class and returning players will be participating in drills and getting more acquainted. While the new Steelers get acclimated with the Steel City we’ll be busy looking for mentions of your Black & Gold so we’ve got you covered. Here’s your Steelers Morning Huddle for Tuesday, June 9th.

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Spring Time on the South Side

Steelers guard Ramon Foster is giving us his first-hand insight this season in a series of posts for Steelers.com. This edition features his perception of OTAs, how they set the tone for the season to come and how different it is from training camp.

"“OTA practices are in shorts with no shoulder protection and although the competitive side of guys comes out, it’s not a time to show everyone you are the next James Harrison or Mean Joe Greene. There will be plenty of time for that later. There are rules that prohibit organizations from having an all-out battle on the turf. Those rules were set in the new CBA to help guys overall health and somewhat lengthen careers.” – Ramon Foster"

Foster goes on to explain how the rookies come in wide-eyed and unsure and the veterans are always anxious to see what the draft picks and undrafted free agents will look like and if they can make it. But more importantly, the OTA practices are for the individual units to get the details of their jobs down before they’re fully implement in camp.

Foster warns against putting too much stock against who is being reported as blowing everyone away this early in the preparation. Foster says a lot of times those guys get labeled as the “South Side All-Pro” because they only perform highly there and then fail to show up the same way at camp.

"“Teams enter OTAs with simple goals in mind, and I think every team’s main goal is to make it through with no major injuries and have their team pointing in the right direction going into camp. Reports and articles come out by the masses about who is looking amazing, who’s the long shot to make the team and who’s looked bad. The truth of the matter is, good and bad impressions are made for some but the true test comes when the pads are put on and you are fighting for one of the 53 spots on the opening day roster.” – Ramon Foster"

Team Building

The Steelers team took a break from OTA practice at the South Side to head over to Dave & Busters at the Waterfront for some good old fashioned fun. I wonder who is the best a skeeball?

Steelers should give Brown a raise?

While the potential holdout situation by Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown has been pretty much squashed, ESPN seems to want to keep the ball rolling with this piece by Jeremy Fowler. In it he describes an unlikely but what he determines to be a beneficial position where the Steelers would restructure Brown’s contract now as opposed to when he has one year left on his deal as per their typical routine.

Fowler suggests that the Steelers could increase Brown’s salary from 2015-17 from the $22.96 million he’s scheduled to make to $34.5 million and add two additional years to the deal. This would increase his cap hit over the course of the next few seasons and put him in the same contract territory as Calvin Johnson but not all the way there.

The idea behind going against their normal operations and giving him the contract restructure now is to reward him for his high-level production and avoid having to come up with a Calvin Johnson-sized contract in two years. I can’t see the Steelers doing this right now when they have a Cameron Heyward and Kelvin Beachum contract to work on that is more pressing.

Next: Steelers Roster Spot Open?

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