DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Let’s see the physical!

DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Let’s see the physical!

[Music] By far the most common question that anyone will ask of anyone who has spent any amount of time in Latroe over the past few days is as follows. How does fill in the blank look? There’s only one correct answer to that. Good morning to you. Good Tuesday morning. I’m Dan Kvachovic of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Steelers. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into hockey andor baseball, I also cover two other teams in town, the Penguins and the Pirates, and offer daily shots of both of those as well. Today is the answer to all of those questions. Meaning, today is the first day you can see how somebody actually looks. let alone describe how somebody actually looks. Because today at 1:55 p.m. on Chuck Nullfield, the Steelers will assemble with pads on. They’ll stretch with pads on. They’ll line up with pads on. They will hit with pads on. And while some of those hits will be either delivered or received by players who’ve already been to some fair extent available for assessments like wide receivers and defensive backs. Those are the ones that tend to stand out in the first few days. Those are the ones that you can say, “Hey, so and so made a great catch.” You know why? Because the great catch really doesn’t rely all that much on physicality in one direction or the other. It can. And great catches can be disrupted or even destroyed by physicality. But for the most part, that’s what you get to see. You see throws, you see catches, you see pass breakups, you see interceptions, and then you just wait. You wait for the real football to begin. That’s today. And what I want to see more than anything on this day, with all due respect to some of the splash that’s really going to be available for the first time, like for example, Caleb Johnson and the running game. Respectful to Jaylen Warren here, we know what he has. I want to see what the kid has defensively. seeing Jaylen Ramsay be close to the line of scrimmage and making things happen up there. In addition to the coverage and the moving around that he’s already done, let’s not forget that Ramsay’s always been at his root a physical player. But all of this, all of this for me has taken a backseat to the lines. And this year for a change, I’m going to be looking at the other line. We can do the offensive line all year long. In fact, we probably will do the offensive line all year long, most unfortunately. But on the defensive side, there have been glimpses, and that’s all that they can be, of Derek Harmon doing good things. There have been glimpses of YA Black doing good things. Today isn’t the day for glimpses. Today is the day for them to eat. As their own coach Carl Dunar might say, uses that line a lot actually. Today is the day that Keanu Benton can begin to try to re-establish himself as a playmaker on this defense to get to the backfield to make things happen. No, you’re still not allowed to sack the quarterback. There’s common sense that’s got to prevail. But get back there, you know, pull the figurative flag, do the kick like TJ Watt does when he’s convinced he would have had a sack in a normal setting because all this other stuff that’s had some of us, I think it’s fair to say, excited about this defense, it’s been about the secondary. It’s been about those names. It’s been about the moving around. But all of it, just like on the offensive side, gets the plug pulled if not for the line. I might end up being wrong about this, and wouldn’t bother me if I was, but the one player that I most want to see rise up in this training camp, as opposed to making a prediction or whatever, the one that I want to see rise up is Howard. If you can get yourself a firstround significant, dependable, dynamic talent and put that player next to Cam Hayward, you make Cam even better than he was in 2024. You make your defense way more versatile than it was in 2024. You make opposing offenses think twice about doing gimmicky stuff like chipping or even outright doubling your best player in TJ. You offer your inside linebackers a little more latitude, a little more flexibility to do some of the things that they can do well, principally in coverage, but also in stopping the run, also even in getting after the quarterback themselves once in a while. And I know this too. For this team to contend, now I’m not just talking about the defense. Talking about the whole team here, there’s got to be one side of the football that’s special. If you want to go ahead and get optimistic or even all all the way romantic about the offense and say, “Yeah, this is all just going to be magical. They’re gonna figure it all out and they’re going to be explosive out of nowhere. You You go right ahead and do that. You’re entitled to your own view on this. That won’t be mine. For me, the defense has to be special. The defense has to be top three, the worst top five in the league. And that begins in this context with the first round pick. And on this day when we come back to one Q. This segment of Daily Shot is brought to you by our good friends at Mike’s Beer Bar. They’re located on Federal Street directly across from PNC Park. Mike has more than 500 beers on tap, including from more than 50 local breweries. Stop in and say hello. Tell Mike we sent you. Mike’s Beer Bar. [Music] Today’s J1 Q comes from Luke who says, “DK has anything that Mike Tomlin has said or done so far in training camp given reason to believe that his approach this coming season will be any different than in years past.” You know, I I’m tempted to come right back, Luke, and say, “No, no, of course not.” I mean, he’s Tomlin. He doesn’t change anything. He He sees change as I don’t want to say so much a sign of weakness, but as a sign of admission that he was wrong at some other stage of the process. That’s not even a criticism. That’s just actually who he is and who he’s been for a long time now as head coach of the Steelers. And mark my words, not to change a subject here, he’s going to fly that football team over there on Friday, meaning to Ireland, in advance of a Sunday game. Why? Because if he goes earlier, he’d be admitting that he did something wrong in 2013 when he flew over there on Friday to London and got smoked by a windless opponent. But to what you’re actually asking here, his approach, is it going to be any different than years past? Yes. Yes. And that’s in part because it has to be. And that’s in part because the roster changed, the construction of the roster, the positional construction changed that necessitates this. Let me give you an example. in casual conversation away from microphones and podiums and so forth. Tomlin will talk a lot about positionless football. It’s a term that blows from him freely. And he talks about having players who can just bounce around to different spots on the field. They’re not assigned to stay within a certain landscape. They’re free to roam. They’re free to switch to this guy or to that guy or to this assignment or to that assignment. presuming, of course, that they know what the heck they’re doing. So, between him and Omar Khan and Andy Widel and however it is that that that all comes together with those three guys over those several months, they got their guys smart, aggressive, accomplished, smart, smart, smart to keep throwing that in because you have to be to do this sort of thing. and they are very plainly I would think Luke going to do something different defensively and not just in the secondary. I have been skeptical, I feel rightly so, of the decision to let in Landon Roberts leave. But I also understand that if you do in fact have Cole Hulkcom being Hulkcom again, then you’ve got yourself one, two, three inside linebackers who can really cover and who can really go sideline to sideline. But the only way that works is if you have other people getting a little bit involved in some of the pass rush. So you move TJ around. You bring Ramsay up closer to the line. You have that first round draft pick I was just talking about who can get after the quarterback. You have that same pick pushing Benton to do the same thing. There’s no reason for this defense to look really, if you think about it, at all like the one from 2024. I’m not even just talking about the numbers or the rankings or 299 or any of that. I’m talking about how they actually look when you’re there in the stadium and you’re watching them line up. They should not look like the same team. So, yes, I think Tomlin’s approach is going to be different. Now, is he going to rely on some advanced concepts for clock management and so forth? No. No. Let’s not push it here. I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Steelers. Don’t forget we will be in Lrobe today all day and we will have a double shot of Steelers that’ll come your way at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. That’s an hour later than usual to afford us the opportunity to, you know, watch practice and interview the players as they’re coming off the field. So, it’ll be at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Double shot of Steelers. Hope you can join us on our YouTube channel and of course on our own app and website DK Pittsburgh Sports. So wonderful. [Music]

First day in pads! Let’s see the physical!

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