So training camp opened Monday, July 28th, out at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe. It’s the fifty-ninth consecutive year the Steelers have gone out there. Fifty-nine. My dad used to mention Latrobe the way some people mention church — just part of the calendar, something that meant summer was almost over and football was almost back.
I didn’t go. I told myself I might go. I say that every year, and every year I end up on the couch.
What I actually did was sit there with Rusty half on my lap — he’s not a lap dog, nobody told him that — and try to watch training camp clips on my phone, which, if you’ve ever tried to watch anything meaningful on a phone with a beagle periodically walking across it, you know how that went. Biscuit was more sensible about the whole thing. She was asleep by the back door, which is where she spends most of the morning in summer. Smart dog.
I did get a decent look at a few of the practice clips before Rusty knocked the phone off the armrest. Enough to have thoughts, anyway. Always enough to have thoughts.
Third cup of coffee, already nervous
Here’s the situation, as I understand it. Mike Tomlin is gone. Nineteen seasons. Never a losing record. One Super Bowl. He stepped down back in January, and the locker room, by all accounts, took it like a funeral. I took it like a funeral, too, if I’m being straight with you, and I don’t even know the man personally. Nineteen seasons is a long time to get used to a thing. You get used to a thing like that. You stop noticing it’s there until it isn’t.
So now we’ve got Mike McCarthy, who came over from Dallas, where he coached for five years and made the playoffs a few times and never got all that far. Before Dallas, he was in Green Bay, where he won a Super Bowl with Aaron Rodgers back in 2010. That’s the part that’s supposed to make you feel better about all this.
And speaking of Rodgers.
Aaron Rodgers is the starting quarterback for the 2026 Pittsburgh Steelers. He is forty-two years old. He has said publicly that this is his last season. He and McCarthy have history. The Steelers brought them both in together, presumably on the theory that reunion tours sometimes work out, which — sometimes they do, I’ll grant that.
I’ve got more to say about Rodgers in a separate post. Short version for now: cautious optimism, heavy emphasis on cautious.
What I was actually watching on my phone
The clips I saw before Rusty intervened were mostly offensive line drills and some quarterback work. Nothing padded yet — first padded practice wasn’t until August 3rd — so you’re not seeing real contact, just the movement and timing stuff. Rodgers looked, honestly, like a forty-two-year-old man who knows exactly what he’s doing. The arm was there. The footwork was there. Whether that holds over a full season is the question nobody can answer in late July, which is part of what makes late July both hopeful and exhausting.
McCarthy on the sideline looked calm. Hard to read anything into that. New coaches always look calm in training camp because training camp is the part where nothing has gone wrong yet. Ask me again in October.
Jalen Ramsey is on the PUP list from a minicamp injury. Worth watching — I’ll say more on that below.
Latrobe, one of these years
My dad took me to camp in Latrobe when I was maybe nine or ten. I remember it being hot and there being a lot of standing around and then something happening and everybody cheering, and I had no idea what it was, but I cheered too because that seemed like the right move. Even then, nebby as I was about football, I understood that you cheered when the crowd cheered.
I’ve been once as an adult. Drove out with a couple of guys from work, stood on the hill, watched for a few hours. Good afternoon. I keep saying I’ll go again. I keep not going.
Admission is free if you get a mobile ticket this year. Maybe I’ll actually do it. Probably I’ll watch it on my phone again while Rusty sits on the charger and Biscuit sleeps through the whole thing.
A thought I keep coming back to, separate from the Rodgers situation:
Jalen Ramsey is on the PUP list from that minicamp injury. Physically unable to perform, which I had already mentioned earlier, but did not give enough weight to. Players come off it, I know that. Some of them come off fine. But Ramsey is not twenty-five, and a cornerback in that situation heading into a season where you already have questions at quarterback is one more variable than I would choose to have if I were the one choosing. I noted it in the clip-watching. I am noting it again here. I will keep noting it until there is a reason not to.
But football’s back. I’ll take it.
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Hey, thanks for stopping by. This is just a place where I write about everything I’ve tried lately: old watches, the dogs, movies, interesting sports games, and any new app or website that catches my eye. Just one guy’s take, nothing more
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