DK’s Double Shot of Steelers: ‘It’s week one’

DK’s Double Shot of Steelers: ‘It’s week one’

[Music] [Applause] [Music] Hey guys, good afternoon. I’m Dan Kvachovic of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is double shot of Steelers and it’s a special episode starring in his own way Aaron Rogers because he met with all the reporter types over on the south side and he could have stirred up a lot just with a word here or there, an inflection here or there. He could have gotten our nation’s largest market, the 13 million people that are in the New York region. He could have gotten them. Woo! And he would have had all kinds of attention coming his way. He would have had people buzzing from here to Sunday and then back. And instead, when he was asked about the return to facing his old team and and Well, here it is. Here’s the whole thing. Are you opening up against another regular season? It’s week one. It’s week one. That’s it. That’s it. That’s the theme. This is this is kind of what I’ve been talking about in a way as it relates to the how shall we put this the steelerization of Aaron Rodgers because this is what the head coach forecast yesterday correctly Rogers would say. That’s not to suggest that Tomlin predicted the future. That’s to suggest that he and Tomlin are on the same page. that he and the Steelers are on the same page. The Steelers aren’t the team that’s going to go and create a whole lot of drama. If there’s anything to be dramatic about the Steelers, it’ll be something that’s based in reality. It’s not going to be whatever. Now, I say this within the context of the Cam Hayward thing, and I pin this entirely on his agent and blah blah blah. Set it aside. Hear me out because Ro what Roger says matters infinitely more than what Cam says or what anybody else says in this circumstance in this scenario. What Rogers could have done today is turn this into an event. And he didn’t. He reminded everybody that the game itself is an event. It’s the event. It’s still week one. And he has nothing nothing to gain. The Steelers have nothing to gain. Nobody on his side has anything to gain from acknowledging that the other jets are even a thing. They are the kind of franchise because they are based in the kind of market that thrives off drama. They live for this stuff. Whatever Rogers would have said today would have blared off the back page of the New York Post. as it is. When you look over there and you see that headline, it’s week one, you look at the size of that font, you look at the boldness of that font and the only place that it has any impact is Pittsburgh. It’s the only because you’re looking at that and you’re saying, “Yeah, that’s that’s what our quarterback would say if he were a quarterback in Pittsburgh. if he were a quarterback for the Steelers, that’s what he would say. Now, Rogers had a bunch else to say, and we’re going to be getting into that with Chris Hock here in a moment. I just want to I just want to put forth my own thought here that he’s he’s got the buy in part down. He really does. It’s not about following PR instructions or anything like that. If you think the Steelers PR is the type to go and tell Mike Tomlin or Aaron Rogers what they should be thinking or saying, you’re not understanding the dynamic in this front office at all. Delete the old one. What you’re talking about here is just a resolute focus on the football. go into that stadium and win the game and then get on a bus and leave that stadium. That’s it. That’s it. When we come back, we will in fact be joined by Chris Hock. At DK Pittsburgh Sports, we take pride in coverage that connects our city’s fans to their favorite teams. Now that connection stronger than ever, introducing our allnew state-of-the-art app. Find expert inside reporting and original podcasts. Check live box scores. Track the latest stats. Chat it up with our community of thousands of fans all in one place. The new app from DK Pittsburgh Sports. Coverage that connects. [Music] Welcome back. I’m gonna be joined here in a moment by Chris Howick as soon as I figure there he is. He knows how to do it. What’s going on, Chris? Hey, what’s going on? Well, I’m not in the forest. I am on the south side, by the way. I’m just It’s right over there. I see that. I see that. Uh, you spent the day over there with the Steelers. You covered the practice. You covered Aaron Rogers’s availability here. First thing that jumped to mind when you were around Rogers today and you heard him speaking the way he did, it’s week one. It’s week one. That was my entire uh entire I’m No, no, seriously though, like it didn’t surprise me at all. I I I I definitely think that the whole revenge game thing is like that’s something the NFL kind of buys into. I mean, it’s not an accident that the Steelers are facing the Jets in week one. Even though Aaron Rogers was not technically a Steeler when the schedule came out, there was a pretty good indication that he was going to be the quarterback that Justin Fields was was already the quarterback in New York. And so, okay, here we are. You know, it’s going to be a revenge game. And Aaron Rogers is like, you know what, I’m focused on my team. I’m focused on this offense. And um yeah, that that to me is is the story of the day is Aaron Rogers is doing everything you should want him to do if you’re a fan of the franchise. And what they want him to do, the other Jets and everybody in that market is they want him to be be part of the whole the drama thing that that they do that it’s just it’s their way of life. I don’t even know that I’m criticizing them when I say this. This is how New York sports are. New York area sports, everything is about Whoa. And you can’t just talk about the game that’s coming up Sunday. You have to talk about, hey, you know, the the Jets are facing Aaron Rodgers this weekend. No, they’re not, man. They’re facing the Steelers. They’re facing the Steelers. And also, and relevant, neither of the two teams there matters at all. And I think that’s part of what gets that’s part of what gets them is that the the teams themselves don’t mean anything. This one especially, and I’m not doing this to talk trash or whatever here. This is this isn’t even an opinion. This this is point of fact. What they need to do is to go in and win the game and leave. Rogers seems to get that. Rogers car has carried himself. Chris, would you agree with this in in a way that has been beyond professional, beyond just focused since the day he showed up in Latroe? Oh, 100%. It’s And it’s not just professional. It’s it he is the the way I described it the last time I I wrote something on him. Um he has been everything you would even want a teammate to be if you are a player in that locker room. He’s been joking around with the guys uh messing around, you know, with the different receivers or the other guys who are close to his locker. He’s even gone out of his way to go with some other guys. But then like there was one day I remember it was a couple of weeks ago and this was after the whole Cam Hayward stuff had already started been known and he sat over in in the corner by where Cam like where Cam’s locker is and I swear they had a 15-minute conversation just talking now talking very quietly and you could tell by the look on their face they’re they weren’t talking about you know I’m not going to presume what they were talk or assume to know what they were talking about But very long conversation over there, sitting down, man-to-man type conversation. And then you go and you see what he does on the practice field and it’s it’s it’s everything’s business. Everything’s about getting the offense down. When plays go well, he celebrates with teammates. When plays don’t go well, he’s talking with Arthur Smith. He’s talk with the with the players so that they can all be on the same page and get everything working. He’s he’s doing exactly what you would expect a veteran quarterback who’s on a trajectory for a first ballot hall of fame like type career. Like he’s doing everything you would expect for that type of a quarterback. Not a guy who’s sitting there sulking because the two last year the two years with the Jets didn’t work out very well. He’s uh he’s he’s going to be ready for this on a lot of levels. He had other interesting things to say. Uh Chris as well and and you were there. You have a you have a couple of clips that you want to play for us here. If you can introduce introduce those for us, I’ll try to make sure that I’m matching. There’s a there’s a 26 second one and there’s a one minute one. What do you got? Well, the shorter one is is more on him, you know, talking about, you know, it’s it’s week one, so yes, like I’m not going to say the cat’s fully out of the bag, but you’re not trying to hide anything anymore. Now you’re actually game planning to beat the other team. Um, but still there there’s a certain level of uncertainty that comes with this. You know, whenever you talk about facing a team that has a new head coach, a new quarterback, you know that there some uncertainty, and that’s the case with a lot of weak ones, but Rogers kind of explained that a bit uh right here in this clip. I mean, there’s always unscouted looks over the years. Different analytics people have said it’s only 30 to 40% as far as unscouted things. Obviously, they’ve held a number of things, I’m sure, in the preseason. We’ve held a number of things that we haven’t run on offense and defense. So, there’ll be a lot of unscouted looks, and that’ll be perhaps the deciding factor in the game is who handles the unscouted looks the best. Hard to argue that. And you want to talk about it being week one. You can show stuff that’s never been put on tape. That’s never been put on tape. up to and including Latroe and they could do it in walkthroughs that are closed to the closed to the public and closed to the media and I’ll bet whatever it is that they would try here they’d be spending a lot of time on it say oh for example Saturday when we have no access to the facility okay but you’re you’re you should with an entire summer to play for a specific and known opponent you should be throwing them things that would just make them go, “What? What the heck is that? We’ve never seen that before. That that that’s got to be part of this game.” Yeah. I think another part of this, at least when it comes from a a fans perspective here, and and Justin actually kind of brings it up here with this comment. I’m very anxious to see how they deploy their pass catchers. Like, he continues to talk about certain things. I talk about Rogers continues to talk about certain things over and over again that kind of get people to when he’s saying it so often you almost have to kind of believe him whenever he gives Roman Wilson praise on multiple occasions. You have to kind of wonder, okay, why? You should be inquisitive enough to know or at least to get to the point of being like, okay, well, why is he singing praises so much, right? He says the same thing about Connor Hayward. He says a lot of great things about Connor Hayward. And here with this other clip that I have of of Aaron talking, he’s talking about this tight end group. But he said something about this tight end group I didn’t expect him to say, especially for how long he’s played and for how many good tight ends he’s played for. So, um, yeah, it was really really interesting to hear him talk about the tight end room in in this manner. And then there there’s another clip that you have from Rogers as well. What do you got there? Well, that that’s that’s on that’s on these tight ends. Uh, you know, him talking about the tight ends uh in this way. It’s it’s pretty pretty Again, when you hear him talk about it, you’re kind of like, “Okay, there’s something going on here with this position.” Here it is. I think it’s it’s the best tight end room that I’ve been around in 21 years because you have four extremely capable guys and we had different runs in Green Bay where we had, you know, some great players, but just the depth that we have here with four guys who you feel great about having on the field at any time and they all have different uh skill set they bring to the table. Um, and I can’t even say who’s the most impressive, maybe the biggest guy in the room because of how many things he can do down the field on the basket. Uh, you know, there was a lot of conversation about is he in the right position. Um the other day we had a practice uh during that week before the the four days off and I threw him a bunch of balls in the red zone and I was just thinking to myself, he’s definitely in the right position because he’s so big and so athletic for a man of that size to be that skilled in the passing game is pretty impressive. Not to mention what he does on the line. I’m sorry. That’s fantastic. Yeah, that that’s fantastic. uh his tight end room he’s been around the best. I thought the Darnell Washington stuff was even stronger. Okay. Yeah. Because there are people and I did this in uh where were we in Jacksonville. I spent the entire evening and then a game afterward talking to Darnell about this and that and left tackle and the weight that he’s added and everything else here. And then and then you have your four-time MVP, 21-year NFL uh all everything, all universe quarterback saying he’s in the right position. That’s I can’t imagine Chris, forget any impact on us. Imagine the impact on Darnell when that gets back to him. And it will like within probably about five minutes of Roger saying that, that got back to number 80 stall. I can promise you. Oh, yeah. For sure. Listen, the these these guys, man, I’ll tell you what, I’m seeing like there at this time of year, there’s always like some level of like looseness and optimism. Everybody Everybody’s undefeated this time of year. Everybody’s feeling good about their team. That this might be the the most loose group I’ve seen. And and I’m talking about it in the in the good way loose, not in the bad way. I mean, DK Medaf was had a had a big scrum around him today, too. And the entire time that DK Medaf was talking to the media, Calvin Austin, Ben Scoronic, Roman Wilson, Scotty Miller, and Max Hurleman, I want to say even one other guy on the on the practice squad were all just surrounding the scrum trolling Medaf as he’s talking like the entire time. and and Troy Falanu had a um a gesture for for DK as he was walking past the scrum too. Uh it’s just it’s a it’s they’re having a lot of fun and I think that’s the one thing that Aaron Rogers has even talked about whenever he’s you know been like or especially early on he’s like you know I’m want to have fun. It’s football. the game, you know, and uh man, I’m telling you, and Rogers is responsible for be as the quarterback responsible for fostering that kind of an environment. And I I want to I want to at least augment because I I completely agree with what you’re describing here. And then I I noticed that you tried to you try to throw in there in a good way when you’re talking about being loose. And I want to emphasize that part because the other thing that’s been in play all along, especially from the veteran guys, TJ and those guys, is that man, they just want to get started. Yeah. I mean, if there’s one trait that stands out more than any other right now in that locker room, it’s that they just want to get started. They’re they’re actually they’re agitated by all of this and that and whatever else is just can we just go there and be what we’re supposed to be. There’s there’s a there’s a confidence within the room as to what they’re going to be. Not just what they can be, but what they feel they’re actually going to be. And this applies doubly on the defensive side of the ball. I want to feel that same vibe from the offense, Chris. It’s not there yet. At least not in my estimation. Okay. Mostly because it can’t be. It can’t be. The offensive line can’t have that attitude that you want until they go out and earn it, until they execute it. The the various members, and of course, the line participates in this of the passing game. They need to go and execute a game. You need to have the first game in a stadium in which the running game looks like it could be competent, if not outright rhythmic. None of that happened in the preseason. We’re not judging that. Vanilla offense, vanilla plays. Didn’t use Jaylen Warren until a couple of plays in Charlotte. But it’s got to get rolled out somewhere. And I have a feeling, Chris, that when it does, maybe you’ll start hitting that real pleasant zone where the offense and the defense start vibing off of each other, but the offense has to be the one that rises up. I’m I’m telling you, it’s not just a matter of going into East Rutherford and winning the game, although that’s the only thing that actually matters. The offense has to partake in this. It can’t be one of those 11 to 10 games. Yeah. Well, what I was actually just about to say is you don’t want it to be the season opener from last year. Yeah. You won the game, but it was 18-10. You won because you have the best kicker in the NFL and he was able to make six field goals for you. You want to have you if you get into the red zone six times, you better not be settling for six field goals. You better be number one, you better be coming away with points every time. And then you better be scoring a touchdown at least four times out of six. Like that would if if you the thing is that’s not even like that high of a percentage. That’s what twothirds of the time. Like what would that rank in the NFL? I’d have to actually go back and look. But but I mean I feel like twothirds of the time getting a touchdown is not that great getting into the red zone. I feel like you know the best teams are pretty good at that. And if you think about just that from a numbers perspective, that’s 34 points in a game. you know, that’s that’s 28 points off of touchdowns, six more points off of field goals. I mean, you should be doing that. That’s what they should aim to do. And if they go into into East Rutherford, New Jersey, and they put up 34 points and they look like a welloiled machine right away before they even get a chance to to I mean, they’re they’re still going to be working out the kinks in some way. And I think one of the things that is going to be important for this offense right away is if they do happen to go three and out on their first series, which is very possible. It’s week one. It’s the very first series. Sure. Don’t get frustrated. I don’t want to be see seeing hanging heads. I don’t want to see guys I don’t want to see bad body language. I don’t want to see that that kind of oh, here we go again. No, it’s it’s a brand new season. You you’ve seen something from the Jets. Now figure it out on the sideline while the defense is on the field. Go back out there and have a better series. you know, um I I have a hard time envisioning, Chris, and hear me out on this because we haven’t talked about this. I have a hard time envisioning the Steelers come out coming out onto the field first quarter and trying to get small, fast, cute, and clever. Okay? Like like I have a feeling that because everything would benefit from this that you’re going to see the Steelers offense come out onto the field big and stay big. Why? You can protect your quarterback. Let’s start with that. That’s number one. You have Jaylen Warren out there. He’s going to pick up the blitzes, whatever it is that Aaron Glenn has in mind. And he is a he is a heck of a defensive mind. suggested coach, whatever that he has in mind, you need Warren out there as your wild card. Warren Jaylen needs to be the one that’s picking things up. Okay? You can’t be screwing around and putting a rookie out there and saying, “Oh, yeah. We’re just going to serve up our our Hall of Fame quarterback to you.” The other benefit to that is is WR2 then becomes moot. You’re going to see players out there that you might not want to see, I think, as a fan. In other words, the kind that gets you excited, the kind that give you all kinds of hope, whether that’s a Roman Wilson, uh, well, not everyone wants to see Roman. I mean, Conor Hayward, someone, they they’re going to look for things that they feel are sure things. You can say whatever you want about Connor Hayward. He catches the football. He catches the football, you put it anywhere near him. Yeah. Okay. I have a feeling you’re going to see some things that are a little bit dull, but that are going to be sure things you’re going to have. And and the message to the other team is going to be you might have stopped us on this drive, but you’re going to have to do this all game. You’re going to have to tackle number 80 that you just heard Roger singing about. Uh you’re going to have to deal with all this bulk on this side of the football. And they’re not going to like that. Nobody does. There’s no level of football at which you go, “Yeah, it’s really cool to be outsized like this for three hours, you know? Yeah. And the the one thing that I I think this this offense can do given all the different types of players that they have is that they’re going to be able to do a number of different things. Uh they’re going to they’re not going to be the the word that has been thrown around a lot, not by not just by Arthur Smith himself, but by Aaron Rogers and a few of the other players is rigid. You don’t want to feel like you have to be you have to fit the offense into this box where you have to do this one thing on this one down uh or you have to do one of these three plays on this third down situation that you’re able to now staying on schedule is a big part of that. Making sure that you’re first and 10 to second and six, second and six to third and two. You know, you’re you’re constantly moving the ball forward. You’re not ever play you’re not or you at least limit the the number of times you’re playing behind the chains. Um, but because they have obviously DK Mechaf and he’s very versatile with everything that he can do. He’s big body guy, can go down field, but he can catch a lot of end breaking stuff. But then you have a whole bunch of tight ends that can do a number of different things. You have receivers that are good that are already proven guys out of the slot. Even Roman Wilson, I would still say is a as proven as can be slot guy based off of what he did at Michigan and what we know he can do in terms of as an NFL player. But then there are different ways to utilize those guys on the outside too and in which you know this whole conversation about WR2. Yes, I get it. You’d feel a lot better about the roster if they had a bonafide number two over there. Sure. But just because they don’t have that guy doesn’t mean that they can’t do a number of different things to help make up for that while they still have other really really good players like Pat Footh and John Smith and I don’t think people are giving enough credit to Calvin Austin and Roman Wilson. I’m not saying that they’re bonafide number twos. But can they do some dangerous things? They can do stuff. Yeah. And I don’t know that they need to function. And this is part of the point that I’m making with the going out there big approach is that I don’t think they need to function as traditional WR2s, right? If you have John Smith out there as a third option as a tight end, that’s a hell of a thing. Okay? And and not everybody has that. So if you want to say, well, the Steelers are one of those teams that don’t have a WR2, then you can look at the other 31 and say, all right, they don’t have a John Smith. Yeah. And he’s not going to be anybody’s third option. By the way, when you coming off a season when you caught the ball 88 times and 55 of those were for first downs, you’re not the the check down. Okay. You’re not the guy who accidentally ends up with a handful of targets. I guess, you know, I I see a I I’m looking here in our comment section as we’re the live chat as we’re going through this and I I see a whole lot of stuff, the usual stuff about predictions and whatever and h how they should really be doing a number on this opponent and and whatever and like John uh Galza says here uh from Facebook, at some point style points have to matter. despite what Tomlin always says. What John is saying is that he wants to see this game be a blowout so that he can relax and he doesn’t have to chew any of his nails off for three hours. Okay, that’s not the point of the game. That’s not the point of the season. To me, the dream scenario for the Steelers is to go into that stadium. I’m just talking about the offense now. It’s all we’re talking about today is Aaron Rogers and the offense. Go into that stadium, establish a foundation that you can live with, that you find confidence in. I couldn’t care less about all your splash and dash and everything else here. I want to know that you can get five yards on first down. Five yards on first down. I want to see the Steelers as a franchise move past this generation of third and nine and second and eight or I’m sorry. I want to see the Steelers as a franchise move past this generation of second and nine, third and eight. It’s time to start getting some yardage on first down. That onus is on Arthur Smith. That onus is on the way the personnel were built. That onus is on Aaron Rogers. But more than anything, that onus is on simple, boring execution. That’s it. That’s it. Yeah. And and the style points thing like that that phrasing really kind of irks me a bit because football, no one says what they actually mean, by the way, when they say that. All they’re saying is I want to relax during this game. Well, no, no, no. That that’s actually it. That’s all it is. I just want to have fun on Sunday. I don’t want to be nervous. Yeah, that’s true. Uh, now the one thing that I would say about that is, listen, I think when people hear Mike Tomlin say that is that they hear Mike Tomlin saying, “I’m fine winning a game if we only score 15 points.” Like Mike Tman wants to score as many points as you possibly can. That that that’s that’s it’s stupid to think otherwise. Like liter like legitimately like like if if you actually think that Mike Tomlin is telling his team, “Hey offense, we only need to get 16 points in this game and and we’re good. I’ll be happy with that.” Like no. He wants the offense to score as many points as possible. When you have Aaron Rodgers as your quarterback, I don’t care if he’s 41. When you have Aaron Rogers as your quarterback, these lantern flies are pissing me off. What? And then whenever and then whenever you have the kind of the the kind of tight end duo that you have, Aaron Rogers said there it’s the best tight end room he’s been around in 21 years. I’m sorry. That’s a pretty freaking high praise from a four-time MVP. Like who’s played with some really really great tight ends over the years. He has. And so like like that’s a that’s a that’s a heck of a compliment. and they have a, you know, it’s not like this offense is void of weapons. And again, when you have Aaron Rogers as your quarterback, you’re not going to sit there, Mike Thomas not sitting there and going, I I I don’t I don’t want to score a lot of points. No, he wants to score a lot of points. That’s why he hired Arthur Smith. That’s why he’s brought in Aaron Rogers. He’s tired of He knows that in today’s NFL, in order to get where you need to go, defenses aren’t holding teams to 13 points a game anymore. They’re just not. Nope. It’s a higher scoring league nowadays. If you if your defense can hold a team to 16 points a game, you are phenomenal. You are you are great great defense. So, I’m I’m just saying like you were required to score points in today’s NFL. Mike Tomlin wants to score points. Christopher West says, “I just want to see this team manhandle someone else for a change.” We will get into the defensive component later in the week. Uh Chris, right now, you know, we’re talking about the offense. I don’t know that you’re going to see the manhandle, but I can tell you that again, you do want to see that. Chris referenced the resilience component, and I I’m going to take Chris’s resilience concept and couple it with mine, which is that you’re just too big to that to to to not get beaten down by them if they’re just going at you five 10 yards at a time. Five 10 yards at a time. Boom, boom, boom. Remember the old Chris uh uh Chris Burman effect when Mike Olto from the Buccaneers when he would he would do that. Yeah, that that’s what I’m I Okay, look, the Steelers don’t have that. They don’t have Jerome Bettis. They don’t even have a Naji Harris now. But they do have a lot of big bodies and they do have a lot of guy who do uh as Coley puts it here, want to be the bully. Everyone talks about Brick Jones. We’re all, you know, concerned about where he’s been at different points in his career. You want to put a big smile on that young man’s face. Tell him you’re about to run the ball for five yards. See what he says to that. You You’ll watch him light up like a Christmas tree. I’ll tell you what, man. I the one thing that I can say about the offensive line just from observing I can’t I can’t give de I can’t give details uh because you know based off of you know practice policies and everything but I’m just saying like I I really think this offensive line is going to take a step forward this year and I I I hope I’m not proven wrong for everybody else’s sake here who’s watching the show today, right? But it looks like I’m not saying it’s going to like transform into a top 10 unit or top five unit or anything like that, but I think you’re going to see actual progress this year. Um that doesn’t necessarily mean that everything’s going to be all sunshine and rainbows all year long. They might have a really really rough week one. That’s that Jets defense. We like to make fun of the Jets and everything. It’s and it’s fun. It’s great. Haha. But it actually is. It is. But But they also have some really good players, especially up front on that defense and they’ve got a pretty tall task uh in week one. That offensive line, the Steelers offensive line does uh facing guys like Quinnon Williams and stuff. I mean, they they can I again I I just I I I would not surprise me if the if they take a step forward this year. How much of a step that’s yet to be determined. It’s hard to say when they’ve only played what what was it five series, six series in the preseason. I I mean the first team offense really hasn’t taken to a football field. Uh unless you count the the the the joint practice with Tampa Bay and even that was that wasn’t everybody and it wasn’t everything. The there’s everything’s getting unveiled on Sunday. Everything. And I know nobody likes to hear that because they like to think they’re investing their time into something proper when they watch preseason. And for the most part, they really, really aren’t. There’s certain things that you can pick apart, but in a general sense, you’re not seeing uh anything at all here. Cody Craraven is going to get our last question in for the day. He says, “If our offensive line turns into a a top 10 line, ouch, dude. That’ll set us up nicely for the future regardless of how this year turns out. Then we can focus our future quarterback. Focus on our future quarterback and skilled players. You’re getting into 2026, dude. It’s week one. It’s week one of the 2025 season. The offensive line doesn’t need to be top 10 anything. The offensive line needs to just execute plays that have already been designed, plays that have already been practiced, rehearsed, repeated, and repeated and repeated. And you don’t have to be a superstar in this offense. You really don’t. Well, one guy does. Okay, maybe two. Let’s throw Medaf in, too. Uh Medcaf actually does have to be a superstar in this offense. Nobody else does think. Am I missing something here, Chris? Do we have to assign a superstar level maybe to Jonnu Smith? Not really. Not with Pat Frymouth there. Who has to be a superstar? Rogers and Metaf period. Yeah. And again, I think that that kind of goes to what I was talking about earlier is that they’ve got a number of different guys who can contribute in different ways. You know, they’ve got again Calvin Austin, Roman Wilson both have their own weights. I think you’re even going to see the occasional time. It might not be it might not even be once a week, but there might be, you know, a once every other week or however where Scotty Miller makes a really big play, you know, something because again, professional receiver Tom Brady loved him when he was in Tampa Bay. Um, you know, you could see, you know, guys make impacts here and there. But I think that’s the thing is that they’re not going to be relying on, hey, Jaylen Warren’s got to touch the ball 30 to 35 times a game in order for our offense to get going. You know, it’s not going to be like that. You, Kenneth Gainwell is going to have a role. Caleb Johnson is going to have a role. Uh at receiver, yeah, Calvin Austin’s going to get going to have a role. Roman Wilson is gonna have a role. And then again, we’re going to go to the tight ends, Johnny Smith, Pat Farmouth, we we talk about it all the time when we talk about the Ravens. When we talk about the Ravens, what’s outside of Lamar Jackson and and Derrick Henry, what’s the first thing that gets brought up? It’s the duo of Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely, right? That’s the first thing that gets brought up when talking about that. Hey, hey, listen, listen. That’s a dangerous matchups. Match up. It’s so hard. It’s so hard to cover. Why can’t the Steelers do that? Because that’s exactly It’s matchups. It’s what co NFL coaches in 2025 talk about matchups more than anything else here. And you’re right. They do fret fret over those specific matchups because they see what they have to put against that player. Well, look at this from the other perspective, meaning facing the Steelers offense. Who’s your matchup for Darnell? Who’s your matchup for John Smith who’s lined up at tight end but is an elite Yak guy? Who’s your matchup for Pat Frimouth? Who’s your matchup for that matter with your WR1? You don’t have one. You don’t have one. So every all of us and we’ve spent a lot of time doing this ourselves too, Chris. So we’re not off the hook. We we we’ve spent weeks and weeks and weeks focusing on the fringe of this roster. Who’s going to make it? who’s not going to make it, uh, who’s good enough as depth for this position or that position. That’s not what Sunday is going to be about. Sunday’s going to be about the guys at the top of that roster, at the top of that food chain. Uh, Chris, appreciate the reporting from the Southside today. He’ll be back over there on uh tomorrow. I’ll be over there on Friday, and then we will both out to the swamps of New Jersey. Are we going to take a jet to go watch the Steelers play the Jets? No, we’re going to take another Jet. That’s what I’m saying. I like other Okay. Okay. There we go. He’s new here, folks. Uh I do see I do see that we had a couple of questions with uh with contributions attached to them. So, I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring those up here real quickly. Levi Smith with $5 says Rogers doesn’t even have to be a superstar. He just has to be better than Triscy pick it feels and Wilson should be easy money. Uh he’s got to be better than that. And he’s going to be better than that. Yeah, this is the best quarterback the Steelers have had since pre-arm injury. Ben since since early 2019. Ben David Kra says top tops for O line. I’m happy. Let’s talk top 10 next year and a good year to do it again. You’re you’re getting into 2026 stuff. That’s talk show stuff. There’s a football game this week. There’s a football game this week. The offensive line needs to achieve one thing Sunday in East Rutherford, and that’s to have none of us talking about it. That’s it. I know we talked about the offense today, but just to lead into any kind of conversation on the defense, I’m just going to give everybody one little nugget here. This defense is ready to play a football game, which they can tackle somebody. They want to claw people’s eyeballs out. That is all I’m saying. That’s all I’m gonna say. That just from what I viewed at practice today, this defense is ready to play a game in which they can actually hit people. Guys, we appreciate you. You know that we will be back with another one of these uh episodes for you tomorrow. Make sure that you’re going to download the DK Pittsburgh Sports app. I saw somebody say earlier here that uh they they saw a video of Cam Hayward in practice today and they found it on social media. He’s like, “No, no, you found it on our app is what you meant to say.” You know, you found it on our app because Chris recorded it and and Chris put it on there. That’s what we’re here for. And that’s that’s where we we’re trying to drive as much traffic as possible to our app because that’s where we are. We want you to come where we are over there. And the way that you can achieve that is to go go to uh your Apple App Store or to Google’s uh I’m sorry, Android. If it’s Android, go to Google Play and download the app for free. After that, email me directly. I’ll answer you myself, dkdpittsports.com to get you a ridiculous discount to guarantee that you’ll get in. You’ll get all the good stuff. You’ll get all the inside stuff. You’ll get the commenting. You’ll get the ad free experience. You’ll get everything. And you will not be disappointed by this. We have a really, really, really high retention rate for a reason, guys. So, all right, everybody. We’ll uh we’ll uh talk to you tomorrow. Chris is saying goodbye from the land of lantern flies. Oh, god. So bad over here. [Music] [Applause]

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Aaron Rodgers lays out the drama-free script for approaching one of the NFL’s most (needlessly) dramatic opponents

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