LATROBE, Pa. -- Canaan Severin is basically nobody.
In context, of course.
He was second-team all-ACC at Virginia. He went unchosen in the 2016 NFL Draft. The Steelers signed him in May of that year, then cut him not once but twice. And now, here at this training camp with a core of a half-dozen wide receivers ranging from solid to spectacular, he might as well be the water boy.
No, the assistant to the water boy.
But on this sunsplashed Sunday afternoon at Saint Vincent College, with Martavis Bryant finally back on the field thanks to whatever mechanism passes for NFL decision-making this week, the franchise quarterback clearly felt compelled to make a striking show of support for Severin, of all people.
On a routine one-on-one passing drill, Severin lined up to the left, broke forward, then cut hard to the left. And as he approached the sideline, it was evident to pretty much any of the several thousand at Chuck Noll Field that this route would take Severin right into a young TV cameraman just outside the chalk. And as any media member who's covered camp for even a solitary afternoon can attest, it's incumbent on the media member to, you know, get out of the bleeping way.
The cameraman didn't budge, and Severin crashed into him and the giant TV camera.
This was just to my left. And it didn't appear either man got hurt. But someone, for sure, was plenty sore.
"Hey, camera guy!" Ben Roethlisberger barked that way. "You want to move a little?"
Camera guy did move. Maybe a step or two. That was it.
So the next snap, which was supposed to go to one of the Steelers' lesser quarterbacks, instead was snapped up by the franchise quarterback.
"Give me the ball," Roethlisberger would say, barely audible, to whoever had the ball. And you want to talk about an audible: Antonio Brown, through an astonishing coincidence, ran a sideline route right to that same edge of the field. And Roethlisberger's pass, through an astonishing coincidence, sailed well above a receiver he seldom misses. And AB's arms, through an astonishing coincidence, made minimal effort to reach upward.
And the ball, through the last of the coincidences, nailed camera guy right in the gut.
So he moved.
And Ben, more than 25 yards away, raised his right hand for an oops-my-bad gesture that, based on everything I heard, fooled no one. Our Matt Sunday, shooting from the same sideline but nimble and smart enough to have not been hit once all through camp, captured the moment:
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