The air is a little crisper here in Western Pennsylvania. Light is leaking out of the sky a little sooner. School parking lots that had been empty for a couple of months are now filled with cars. All are signs that summer is slowly, but inexorably, giving way to fall. And that real football is almost back.
Not Kaden Wetjen and Lake McRee leading the Steelers in receiving yards in preseason games.
It is one of the best times of the year for football fans, anticipation for the smorgasbord of games that will soon come while everyone’s favorite team is still undefeated.
For those fighting for their professional lives, this week is nothing short of brutal.
“It’s an awful time because you’re living a dream, but it’s about to become a reality, and for some folks it’s going to become a sad reality,” former Steelers offensive lineman Willie Colon said on KDKA’s Extra Point show after Pittsburgh’s second preseason game.
The NFL is a bottom-line business. That is never more evident than at the end of August. Simple math pops dreams like balloons, without prejudice.
Ninety-man offseason rosters have to be reduced to 53 by the end of Sunday afternoon. Practice squads and injury lists offer soft landing spots. But room on those across the league is limited.
And by early next week, hundreds of players trying to break into the NFL – or keep their foot in it – will be pondering their next move.
Colon remembers that reality all too well.
The Steelers drafted nine players in 2006 when they picked Colon in the fourth round less than three months after winning the Super Bowl. Colon carved out a nice career with the Steelers, if one plagued by injury. He spent seven seasons in Pittsburgh, signed a second contract with the Steelers, and won a Super Bowl ring with them.
But the five players the Steelers drafted after Colon – Orien Harris, Omar Jacobs, Marvin Philip, Charles Davis, and Cedric Humes – never played a down that counted in Pittsburgh. Only Harris, a defensive lineman taken 31 picks after Colon, played in the NFL after the Steelers released him. And that was 20 games while spending time with seven different organizations.
“To this day there’s guys that left the locker room that I’ve never seen again, so that’s hard,” Colon said, “but that’s the nature of the business.”
Business comes to a head at the beginning of next week. And players, such as those trying to claw their way onto the Steelers’ 53-man roster, have one final game to state their case.
Colon’s advice to them should resonate far beyond Pittsburgh.
“Let it rip. Whatever’s going to be is going to be,” Colon said. “You don’t want to go home at night thinking what you could have did or should have did.”