Play.it Usa Forum

Whatarush wrote: A Willie Colon il sombrero calza a pennello...anche perchè su metà degli snap si fa una siesta  :gazza:

Whatarush wrote: Post-Gazette di oggi:
With the money and the salary-cap room the Steelers saved by releasing Foote added to the savings from Hines Ward's new deal, the Steelers should be armed to negotiate some contract extensions with select players entering their final year.

Qualcuno, leggendo il Twitter di Rosenhaus, ha vaticinato una sua (prossima) presenza in da Burgh  :sbadat:
Questo perchè il caro Drew ha scritto un paio di righe sui suoi assistiti che vestono la nostra maglia :sbadat: :sbadat: che ovviamente vi riporto qui  :sbadat: :sbadat: :sbadat:

"Lawrence Timmons is very excited to be the starter for the Steelers. Coach Tomlin told me he has a chance to be one of the best in the NFL".
e soprattutto
"We have also expressed an interest to the Steelers in extending Justin Hartwig's contract who is entering the last year of his deal".

Justin sta giocando sotto un biennale da back-up (l'indimenticato Chukky Okoby prendeva di più). Gli Steelers volevano Wood, ma se lo son visti soffiare dai Bills, poi hanno preso Shipley al settimo giro. Hanno anche un altro paio di opzioni da verificare, ovvero Stapleton (a Rutgers giocava centro) e Legursky, un practice squadder cui hanno appena dato un contratto di due anni. Questo per dire che Hartwig non sembrerebbe una priorità....però le cose possono cambiare, soprattutto se il prezzo restasse ragionevole. In fondo non è abitudine della casa cambiare centro ogni due anni - a meno che il signore in questione non si chiami Sean Mahan         

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Il pezzo di Bouchette, già citato sopra, contiene anche un'analisi a freddo dell'affaire Foote...una cosa che mi ha fatto piacere leggere è questa:
The problem for Foote is that his buddy, Farrior, has not slowed down. Farrior is 34, and Foote will be 29 in June. Timmons' qualities seem to fit Farrior's position -- involved in more drops and pass defense rather than merely being a run-stopper -- more than Foote's. It seemed logical that when the Steelers placed Timmons inside, ultimately he would take over for Farrior, not Foote.
Insomma, ogni tanto ci prendo ancora!!!   

Whatarush wrote: Insomma, ogni tanto ci prendo ancora!!!   

pandu86 wrote: poteva essere un nostro idolo...ora deve morire sotto i colpi dello Smash Mouth 

pandu86 wrote: Whether offensive tackle Michael Oher, the Ravens’ first-round draft pick, turns into another All-Pro like Jonathan Ogden won’t be known for years, but what’s known right now is that Oher can work a room from behind the microphone.

During the news conference in Baltimore called to introduce him to
the city, Oher said, right at the start, “I’m going to do everything I possibly can to get them to beat Pittsburgh.”

Nothing like stoking a rivalry six months in advance.

poteva essere un nostro idolo...ora deve morire sotto i colpi dello Smash Mouth 

Q: You just drafted a receiver in the third round, Mike Wallace. What does he bring to the table?

A: Well, Mike is one of those guys who’s pure speed. He can take the top end off the coverage. He’s very, very similar to Nate Washington: a little bigger, maybe a little stronger at this point already being a 200-pounder. He is extremely fast on a kickoff return, which is what we need. He hits it like Quincy Morgan, who we had a few years ago. But he’s an outside guy, deep threat, great kid. It’s amazing, we got another guy who was his high school teammate in New Orleans, after Katrina. Great kid in that he’s overcome a lot of things already in life. I really like his work ethic.

Q: Could you touch on his story?

A: One of his brothers was killed. I think another one’s in prison. And he was displaced by Katrina. Walker High School is a great high school. We recruited a lot of kids out of there when I was at Mississippi State years ago. Yeah, he’s not had the easiest of times, and to get where he is today tells you about the qualities he has inside.

Q: You wrote down the names of Wallace and Kraig Urbik three weeks ago and then sat back and watched them come to you. What moved you to do that?

A: Well, as an offensive staff we do it every year. We put down our dream drafts. If we can get these five guys out of this draft, it’d be the perfect draft for us. In the first round we loved Max Unger and we loved Eric Wood, especially Eric Wood, and then Ziggy Hood was way too good to pass up and we tried to go back up and get Max. As things fell to us, Kraig is a guy who’s just a blue-collar, tough, Wisconsin lineman who can play a couple of positions. Smart and tough is what we’re looking for, and both guys are extremely healthy. They don’t have any nicks on them. So it was real clean for us.

Q: So it was like,‘If we don’t get these guys here, we can get these guys later.’

A: Right. And we have a couple guys down here as Round 5 guys who we’ll have to fight the defense over. There are a couple kids we have penciled in here who can make our football team and dress on Sundays. We’re a good enough football team to wait for guys to develop, but, if you can find a guy now who you think is going to dress next year on Sunday, that’s a heck of a valuable pick.

Q: Especially on the offensive line, right?

A: Yeah. It’s something we’ve had to address. I don’t know. There are a couple more guys who possibly could be in the developmental stage for us at positions that we’d like to have a young guy at. It’s kind of what we’re doing with Tony Hills. It’s a position to consider, but there are a couple of skill guys out there that I think could be really valuable to us.

Q: What can you tell us about Tony Hills? Or do we have to wait until preseason to learn how he’s developed?

A: I think we all have to wait till we put the pads back on. He’s bigger, stronger. He had a nice minicamp last week. He looks like he’s improved his footwork and his tenacity. Now it’s just putting the pads on and hitting people and seeing if that strength equates into power – not only at the point of attack blocking, but holding off those bullrushers. He’s very athletic, so he can handle all the dancer types. But the big guys who are just going to come down the middle on him, let’s see if he can hold them.

Q: Could Hills be your swing tackle now? Or does the drafting of Urbik allow you to use Trai Essex as the swing tackle?

A: That kind of was behind it. If Kraig is what we think he is, then Trai can go back and not have to play five positions. You know, we had him snapping the ball for the Super Bowl if we needed him as an emergency center. That’s his value: He can play every position. But he can get back in the mix at both tackles, then we have a guy in the middle that we’ll eventually try to teach how to snap the ball, too, so we have a third guy to get us out of a ball game and still only dress seven linemen.

Q: Urbik told us he’s comfortable putting the ball between his legs, even though he’s never done it in a game.

A: That’s the nice thing about his position flexibility. He’s played tackle and guard and practiced at center. Now let’s see if he can do that with Casey Hampton over him.

Q: I remember asking Russ Grimm what’s Casey’s secret. Russ put his hand a foot-and-a-half from the floor and said,‘That’s his helmet. Let me see you block that.’

A: And then there are about 15 cinder blocks on his butt behind his helmet. He ain’t going anywhere. If you just stalemate him you’re doing a heck of a job.

Q: Were you consciously looking to address your short-yardage unit and does Urbik address that?

A: Yeah, that was kind of a four-pronged deal. The interior, when we did not make it on the goal line, it was more mental errors and people running through a gap, than it was getting our butts kicked. Gary Russell addressed a lot of that for us. He addressed that niche and he was very good at it. Now we’ve got to replace him. Hopefully Rashard (Mendenhall) is going to be very good at that because he’s got the size and the speed to hit all the holes, but, yeah, we think just correcting it and not letting the lineman or linebacker run through a gap will help at the goal line. The short-yardage thing, we were OK once Gary came on. Also, the acquisition of Sean McHugh -- not that Carey Davis isn’t a good fullback -- but Sean gave us a 260-pound guy to send up in there and still have three tight ends in the game so you don’t know where they’re going to line up. That’s a nice little thing. When you have a fullback, you pretty much know you’re going to have two backs in the backfield and you can get your defense set. When you have three tight ends, you can have wings, all kinds of different formation changes. Sean was a nice pickup for us.

Q: A lot of fans saw Duke Robinson at the top of the Mel Kiper rankings and thought he was the guy. What do you think about him?

A: He’s more of a low-motor guy. We want high-motor, high-intensity, smart, tough guys. Not that he might not turn into a heck of a pro, but at this point in time his motor does not run fast enough.

Q: But Urbik?

A: He’s got that. Now, when you go down to the Senior Bowl and watch the one-on-one stuff, I know he looked a little rigid and stiff. Most linemen are. But when you put them together, five guys, he knows how to play football. He knows how to cover up the guy next to him, work together. I always talk about the Giants’ offensive line. They’re not the most talented. I had Shaun O’Hara in Cleveland. He’s a free agent out of Rutgers. He walked on at Rutgers. Now he’s in the Pro Bowl because he knows how to play as part of a group. You have to have five guys playing as one to really have a good line. The last half of the season, once the injuries occurred, we got to play together, and in late November, December, our offensive line played extremely well as a group, other than the goal line where we turned a guy loose every now and then.

Q: The failings in the screen game last year, were they due to a lack of mobility up front?

A: Yeah. You lost two great, great players in Jeff Hartings and Alan Faneca, who might be the best screen combination I’ve ever been around; one getting out and the other peeling back, and they always knew who was out front. That takes time. We tried it and tried it and tried it and figured ‘We’re just whistling Dixie here, let’s just throw the screen to our wide receivers and get them out in space.’ It’s an area we want to go back to, see if we can get guys to work cohesively out in space. When we go back and study it – as a matter of fact, one of our offseason projects next week is to go back and look at all the screens – but last year in the NFL those things were way, way down compared to what they had been coming out of the backfield.

Q: What about the rest of your receiving corps?

A: Limas (Sweed) had a real nice camp, as did Dallas Baker. It was nice to see him come back and have some confidence because he’s a guy who can play. He just lost his confidence last year when he dropped some balls. Martin Nance can play all four positions. There’s quality and depth there. Young guys coming in and having speed, that’s the thing. Hopefully Limas can continue. He got behind a lot of guys last year. He just needs to relax and catch the ball. He’s working so, so hard at it, I have no problem saying he’s going to be all right.

Rocky wrote: When the Pittsburgh Steelers visit the White House next week, they’ll do it without one of the men primarily responsible for their sixth Super Bowl title:  Linebacker James Harrison.

“This is how I feel — if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don’t win the Super Bowl,” Harrison said.  “As far as I’m concerned, [Obama] would’ve invited Arizona if they had won.”

:lol2:

...che personaggio! Qua mi sembra un pò fuori dalle righe comunque, anche se per uno che "When I'm not playing football I'm watching Cartoon Network on my couch, that's all I do." (cit.) ci può stare. Credo che alla fine interverrà Mr. Rooney in persona per evitare problemi.

Rocky wrote: When the Pittsburgh Steelers visit the White House next week, they’ll do it without one of the men primarily responsible for their sixth Super Bowl title:  Linebacker James Harrison.

“This is how I feel — if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don’t win the Super Bowl,” Harrison said.  “As far as I’m concerned, [Obama] would’ve invited Arizona if they had won.”

Rocky wrote: When the Pittsburgh Steelers visit the White House next week, they’ll do it without one of the men primarily responsible for their sixth Super Bowl title:  Linebacker James Harrison.

“This is how I feel — if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don’t win the Super Bowl,” Harrison said.  “As far as I’m concerned, [Obama] would’ve invited Arizona if they had won.”

:lol2:

...che personaggio! Qua mi sembra un pò fuori dalle righe comunque, anche se per uno che "When I'm not playing football I'm watching Cartoon Network on my couch, that's all I do." (cit.) ci può stare. Credo che alla fine interverrà Mr. Rooney in persona per evitare problemi.

Rocky wrote: When the Pittsburgh Steelers visit the White House next week, they’ll do it without one of the men primarily responsible for their sixth Super Bowl title:  Linebacker James Harrison.

“This is how I feel — if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don’t win the Super Bowl,” Harrison said.  “As far as I’m concerned, [Obama] would’ve invited Arizona if they had won.”

:lol2:

...che personaggio! Qua mi sembra un pò fuori dalle righe comunque, anche se per uno che "When I'm not playing football I'm watching Cartoon Network on my couch, that's all I do." (cit.) ci può stare. Credo che alla fine interverrà Mr. Rooney in persona per evitare problemi.