If you had any question about how heavily Ben Roethlisberger is invested in the 2021 season, minicamp this week was a good reminder.
Roethlisberger was like another coach on the field all week, helping direct traffic, giving hints and tips to receivers and running backs about how he wants things, doing things you’d expect an 18-year-veteran to do.
Even an injury scare didn’t keep him off the field.
On the opening day of camp last Tuesday, Roethlisberger went down in a heap on the field, something obviously wrong with his knee.
Mike Tomlin brushed it off when asked about it – and an injury suffered by JuJu Smith-Schuster the same day that caused him to limp off the field with trainers.
“None concerning. None whatsoever,” Tomlin said. “I don’t talk injury in great detail this time of year. I’m not required to do so. But rest assured, if I thought something was significant, I would address it with you guys.”
Still, Smith-Schuster didn’t practice the final two days of minicamp. Roethlisberger? He was back out there the next day.
It would have been easy for Roethlisberger to use the injury to ask out of what was probably the 50th or more minicamp practice of his life. Honestly, what’s Roethlisberger getting out of a session in mid-June, especially after he’s been a regular in attendance at the team’s OTAs?
But this is important to him. He’s bought into it 100 percent.
Is there any question that he’ll be 100 percent in on learning and implementing Matt Canada’s new offense?
Canada raised the radar of Roethlisberger haters early in the week when he said the Steelers would “do what Ben wants to do and how Ben wants to do it.”
But that’s what every offensive coordinator in the league would say if asked the same question. You run what your quarterback can do and run plays your quarterback is capable of performing. To not do so is career suicide.
Canada also was clear he heard Art Rooney II’s mandate the Steelers must run the ball more and more effectively in 2021. You can bet that message was delivered to Roethlisberger, as well, when he met with Rooney to talk about his return for the 2021 season.
To think otherwise is foolish.
• Roethlisberger’s arm strength continues to be questioned around the league. But here’s the thing to think about as the Steelers wrap up minicamp.
A year ago at this time, we hadn’t seen Roethlisberger throw live and in person yet as he came back from his 2019 elbow surgery. We didn’t see that until August.
In fact, when the Steelers’ season wrapped up with their playoff loss to the Browns, Roethlisberger was less than a year removed from the video of him surprisingly tossing a football in the previous February at his checkup in Los Angeles.
Less. Than. A. Year.
And that was less than a year removed from lightly tossing a ball for the first time. Remember how shocked everyone -- including the Steelers -- were to see the video of Roethlisberger tossing the ball at what was supposed to simply be a check up?
Roethlisberger’s issue in 2020 wasn’t arm strength as much as it was deep ball accuracy. And some of that came from the type of deep passes he was throwing.
He was 8-33 on deep passes down the right sideline. He was 10-25 on deep passes over the middle and down the left sideline combined.
So, why keep throwing them like that? It worked. Five of his 10 touchdown passes on deep balls came down the right sideline.
Expect Canada and Roethlisberger to correct that issue. His accuracy looks better than it did a year ago – when the bar for him throwing the ball was just the ability to do so.
Tomlin said at least twice during training camp last season that balls were wobbling more coming out of Roethlisberger’s hands than he remembered them doing in the past. The ball isn’t wobbling now.
• We’re generally not permitted to talk or write about what we see at these sessions outside of what happens in individual sessions or unless we get confirmation that it happened from a player or coach.
But since the Steelers posted a photo of Najee Harris making a one-handed catch in the back of the end zone over linebacker Robert Spillane on Wednesday, it’s fair game.
It happened. It’s documented. And it drew plenty of hoots and hollers from his new teammates, some of whom hadn’t gotten to see him do that several times during OTAs, something I asked him about back then.
Suffice it to say it was a very special play.
This kid is good and is an impact player. He’s everything you expect a first-round pick to look like.
• From top to bottom, the Steelers have talked about becoming more physical on offense. That sound like a team that’s going to throw the ball 650 times again this year?
Harris will be a big part of that as 230-pound running backs tend to do.
But this offseason was all about re-establishing a mindset.
“With everything that we do, we have an approach to build and develop our personality, not only through physical labor, but mental approach,” Tomlin said Thursday after camp wrapped up. “Although we’re not carrying pads … we are laying the foundation for that agenda.”
Yes, Canada’s offense will be different. And yes, it will be run through Roethlisberger.
This won’t be so much about teaching an old dog new tricks as much as it will be about re-establishing something at the line of scrimmage.
"It's not about talking about it every day," first-year offensive line coach Adrian Klemm said. "It's about Matt designing plays that put us in situations that we can be physical. It's about making it so there's not that need for a ton of communication and plays where guys have to do a lot of reading and thinking. It's running and taking advantage of their natural athleticism and allowing them to be physical. Not overcomplicating things, simplifying things where we can so they can be as physical as possible.
"The majority of our guys already have it in them. Once you create that culture, you just feed off of it and you grow. We're nowhere near where we need to be but there's been some gains made in that direction and it's encouraging and I'm excited about it."
• The Steelers have nine to 10 NFL-caliber offensive linemen. They might not have the star power they had in the past, but they do have depth.
The same could be said of one of the other big question marks – the secondary.
It’s pretty obvious the Steelers feel better about James Pierre and Justin Layne than many outsiders. And there was nothing that happened this week that should lead them to believe they were wrong.
They’re still searching for who might be in the mix at the nickel spot behind Cam Sutton, but the options on the outside don’t look bad when Sutton slides inside.
That will still play itself out in training camp, but it’s not the disaster-in-waiting some seem to think any more than the line might be.
The outside linebacker depth? We’ll see. That could be an area where the Steelers add a veteran late in camp if things don’t work out, the same as adding another player capable of playing the slot.
But between Antoine Brooks, Arthur Maulet and Shakur Brown, the Steelers have backup slot corners. They just have to settle on one to play behind or in conjunction with Sutton.
Plenty of teams use multiple players to man that spot depending on what they’re looking for on a particular play. Heck, the Steelers did that at times with Sutton and Mike Hilton, who was a great blitzer and in run support but not the best player in coverage.
That works too.