"Fun" was what Alejandro Villanueva called it, though I never know how to take remarks like that from a dude who once dogged bad guys in the Afghan desert.
It was high noon on this 84-degree Friday, and the straight-up sun was mercilessly pummeling the Steelers' final practice of the week. Not a cloud in the sky. Exposed out on the middle field of the expansive Rooney Complex. Nary a twig's worth of shade in sight. And the flow of water from the drinking hoses couldn't keep pace with the perspiration pouring off chinstraps.
But yeah, it actually did look like fun. Sounded like it, too.
Among the final drills, a pass resulted in a rather academic touchdown -- NFL reporting rules prevent me from specifying -- and the hoots and hollers that ensued, I'd swear, were echoing off the Hazelwood hills all the way across the Mon.
"That's what you've got to do in the NFL. It's a grown man's league," Vince Williams was telling me afterward. "You're not always going to have the outcome you want. But you've got to refocus right away. You've got to go out there and love the game like you always do."
Refocusing couldn't have been easy, of course, after Nemesis 33, Steelers 3, on an opening Sunday night. Especially not in Nemesis' stadium. I was in the locker room, and that was dour enough. I'll bet the team bus and overnight charter flight back to Pittsburgh were even bigger blasts.
"No, they weren't," Vinnie came back when I broached that, clearly failing to find humor in it. "But you know what? I came in here Monday morning and I'm, like, 'OK, Seattle, Russell Wilson, let's go.' "
Come on.
"I'm serious. Immediately. There wasn't a thing I could do worrying about the game we'd just lost. Obviously, you want to make corrections to the mistakes you made in that game, but other than that, there's nothing I can do about it."
Maybe find extra motivation?
"Nope. No extra motivation. Learn from the mistakes, make the adjustments, move on."
Just start over?
"Just start over."
OK, then. So it'll be Steelers vs. Seahawks, 1:02 p.m. kickoff, Heinz Field, for the franchise's 87th home opener and, for all intents and purposes, this team's second season opener. A re-opener, if you will. A chance to just start over.
"That's what's being preached, so that's how we're taking it," Stephon Tuitt, smiling broadly, told me. "I know it's just one game. I also know some people probably feel like we've already played two or three games. We haven't. It was one game. I'm just looking forward to getting into our stadium in front of our fans. And winning."
David DeCastro expressed a similar sentiment:
I liked it. The look, the sound, the feel.
I liked, too, that the health isn't just intangible: Everyone was a full participant in practice Friday except for Rosie Nix (knee), who's been ruled out. Sean Davis (ankle), whose absence in Foxborough proved more painful than most maybe anticipated, enthusiastically assured me he won't miss another. Maurkice Pouncey (ankle) and Joe Haden (shoulder) were back on the field for the first time all week, with Pouncey stating afterward he'll play. The same pronouncement came from JuJu Smith-Schuster (toe), who said he feels "great," adding that he'd been "making cuts on Boujee," his Instagram-famous dog.
The full, final official report from the team:
Only Nix will sit out, and hey, who needs a fullback around here, right?
I like all of it.
I'll like it all the more if the following five keys come into play, in no particular order:
5. Use the best receivers.
I mean, duh. Feels silly to elaborate on this, but this offense needs to get its top talent on the field. Now. Because the only chance at contending is to support the franchise quarterback with above-average wide receivers. I'm not burying Donte Moncrief, but he is what he is even when he isn't dropping everything in sight. I'm not burying Ryan Switzer, either — his upside's as tall as he is.
Get James Washington on the field ahead of Moncrief.
Get Washington and Diontae Johnson on the field ahead of Switzer.
And for crying out loud, get JuJu the ball. No opposing coach or coordinator should dictate an elite player out of a team's attack. That's soft. That's passive. Get creative and aggressive and find different ways to pump passes into his hands.
This is the week, too. Seattle's secondary stinks.
"Going into this game, it's going to be on our offense," JuJu said Friday, without at all disrespecting the Seahawks, whom he'd praised earlier. "It's about going out there and dominating, doing our part."
Tight ends sold separately.
4. Run-block with conviction.
Say what one will about Randy Fichtner's three straight tosses to Jaylen Samuels, but the fact is the Steelers did try to run the ball in Foxborough. They just happened to fail miserably, with 25 yards on 12 combined carries by Samuels and James Conner. And from this vantage point, that failure stemmed in large part from the offensive line -- a genuine team strength -- never getting rolling. Both Samuels and Conner were being bludgeoned before they got to the line.
"We have to be better," DeCastro told me. "And we will be."
If that takes a two-back set, so be it. Whatever it takes. Even if the Seahawks look as lost in the defensive backfield as they did against the Bengals, this principle has to be applied sooner rather than later.
"We know we can run the ball," Conner told me. "It's all about execution."
What he can't say and I will: That execution starts up front.
3. Stop the splash.
"When you really, really break that game down," Davis was telling me Friday, "aside from a couple big plays, when the Patriots made it down to our red zone, we got them to kick four field goals. Take those big plays away, get a couple big plays from our offense, and we're all looking at it a lot differently than 33-3. We're just trying to look at the positives."
Yeah, good luck. There were almost none. And wishing away all the New England splash -- five pass plays of 20-plus yards, including Phillip Dorsett's 58-yard touchdown over Davis' replacement, Kam Kelly -- is meaningless to the extreme, just as it'll be Sunday.
But it's pointing in the right direction, anyway. Davis is hardly a playmaker at safety, but he also doesn't get burned in a center-field role, and that'll be how he's deployed against the Seahawks. Russell Wilson's eminently capable of using his mobility to extend plays deep downfield, and that'll involve extra pursuit time for everyone, especially Davis and the corners.
This defense did deserve a better fate Sunday, but minimizing splash is a must.
2. Embrace the place.
Hey, it matters in football. Always has, always will.
To a man, the Steelers with whom I've spoken in the past week have underscored looking forward to running out of their home tunnel. I get that. They had an upbeat offseason, cleaned out a lot of general garbage, seemed to get the city back behind them ... and then that. This term tends to gets overused or misused, but they were bona fide embarrassed, and that's a rare sight in professional sports.
They're looking for a little energy, sure, but also a little love.
Knowing the Nation, they'll have to earn it first.
1. Get the best out of Ben.
I'll often try to get a little too clever with lists like these, but Ben Roethlisberger didn't exactly rise above in Foxborough, certainly not compared to his counterpart. He threw 20 incompletions among 47 passes and, even accounting for Moncrief's drops, that's still lousy. To boot, he didn't make necessary reads at the line, didn't spot open targets and locked in for too long on the ones he did.
"The quarterback has to get better," Roethlisberger reiterated this week, this after blaming himself entirely -- typically over-the-top, I might add -- after the loss. But he, too, seemed to be in the page-turning spirit. "I told the guys Monday when we came in here, out there doing our run, 'Look up, the sun's still shining, the sky's still blue.' The best thing is we still get to play Sunday. It’s Week 1. We started a few years ago 0-4. It’s a long season. Half the teams in the league lost their first game."
Yep. Seven of the NFL's 12 playoff qualifiers in 2018 did, too.
Can confirm the sun/sky thing, as well.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers practice, Rooney Sports Complex. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS