SteelerWatch

Information for your Steelers’ 2007 Training Camp has been posted on the team’s official site, including practice schedules.  The players report to camp in just 24 days on July 23!

Find the info here.

Peter King has made his thinly veiled dislike of the Steelers well known to ‘Burghers, but it looks like he’s now dragged his colleague, Bucky Brooks, into the mix.  Brooks is responsible for SI’s list of the top 25 wide receivers in the league.  Shockingly, Hines Ward actually made the list — in 23rd, nine spots behind Steelers cast-off (and Giants slacker) Plaxico Burress.

The team has signed draft pick Ryan McBean to a three year contract.  There are no numbers yet available on the defensive end’s deal.

Good nose tackles are hard to find these days, with the few college teams running a 3-4 defense.  The Steelers just shored up the position, securing long-time backup Chris Hoke to a contract extension that will keep him in black and gold through 2010.  The deal is worth $6 million.  It is not yet clear whether the included $1.5 million signing bonus is part of the $6 million or if it is additional money.

While $1.5 million per year may seem like a lot for a backup, the nose tackle position is arguably the most critical in a 3-4 defense, meaning a capable veteran is generally needed to step in, if and when starter Casey Hampton goes down with an injury.  Hoke has started 11 games in his career.

If any of you are faithful Mondesi’s House readers, you’ve probably found this little gem.  Otherwise, unless you have nine-hundred sixty-one Steelers sites in your RSS reader like me (that’s only a small exaggeration), you haven’t seen it.

Pete Prisco of CBS Sportsline (sorry Mondesi, it’s not SI.com) ranked his top 50 players for the seventh year running.  Now, I don’t know who he ranked where in previous years, but this year he blew it big.

While the Steelers were 8-8 last season, they are one year removed from a Super Bowl victory with the vast majority of the starters from that season still on the roster (gone are Jerome Bettis, Jeff Hartings, Antwaan Randle El, Kimo Von Oelhoffen,  Chris Hope and Joey Porter, meaning they still have 16 of 22 starters).  You can’t tell me that one year after a Super Bowl, all 16 of those players have fallen so far as to not be included.

Here’s a sampling to show you how dumb Prisco is:

1) Willie Parker may only have three seasons under his belt, but he has improved each year.  In fact, he had over 1,700 yards from scrimmage and 16 touchdowns in 2006, behind a line that looked average at best and inept at its worst.  He posted two games over 200 yards rushing, and could have potentially come close to breaking the single game record in one of those outings had he not been pulled with over half the fourth quarter to go.  Yet he gets snubbed.

2) Troy Polamalu played 2006 through constant injuries and still managed to be an impact player, particularly in the second half of the season as the defense improved as a whole.  That improvement was due in large part to Troy’s improved health.  Putting his slight drop-off aside, he’s played at a level above and beyond even the upper echelon of safeties his entire career.  He is the centerpiece of a championship defense, and is undoubtedly the defensive MVP.  Prisco included safeties Kerry Rhodes, Bob Sanders, a highly overrated Sean Taylor and — at 22nd, no less — Adrian Wilson of the Cardinals.  But no Troy.

3) Pete got jiggy wit New Orleans Saints defensive end Will Smith at number 27.  Not surprisingly, the only 3-4 DEs on the list are Richard Seymour (who I admit deserves to be there) and fellow Patriot Ty Warren (who is good, but not top-50 good).  Why?  Because 3-4 ends get less respect than Rodney Dangerfield when it comes to defining a “great” player.  But Aaron Smith, the strongest, most athletic 3-4 DE in the league, is missing — even though he is the other half of the trench stuffing tandem of Smith-Hampton.

4) Speaking of Casey Hampton, he isn’t there either.  How — how on earth?! — do you leave the best nose tackle in the last decade off this list?  It’s so hard to find a good, let alone a great, nose tackle, and yet Hampton is so athletic even at 320 pounds that he can drop into shallow coverage over the middle on tight ends and running backs.  There is no other defensive tackle in the league as versatile, and — if you believe the Pro Bowl Bench Press competition is a good indicator — only a single player in the entire league (Larry Allen) stronger than Casey.

5) Hines Ward doesn’t put up outrageous numbers.  He never has.  But he’s a perennial Pro Bowler, and is the most complete receiver in the league.  He’s not the fastest, or the tallest, and he doesn’t have the best hands.  But there are few receivers I would want on my team over Ward when it came down to making sure grabs when it counts, and there is no — no — receiver I would want on the field over Ward on a running play.  And dammit, he’s a Super Bowl MVP.  But Lee Evans is there at number 36, and Prisco himself even said that Evans only “flashed star potential” in 2006.  News flash, Pete: Evans will one day be a star.  Ward already is, and has been since he first became a starter.

6) We may no longer like the guy here at SteelerWatch, but Alan Faneca is one of the top two guards in the league.  Depending on who you talk to, he’s sometimes mentioned as the best, ahead of Steve Hutchinson.  But he was ignored, while Eagle Shawn Andrews was included at #31.

There are non-Steeler items as well.  Things like snubbing Eagle Brian Westbrook while including his teammate, the oft-injured Donovan McNabb.

I understand that this is one man’s opinion.  But if that one man clearly hasn’t watched a game of football in the last six years, then he shouldn’t be allowed to get paid for writing that kind of drivel while those of us who are passionate about it are struggling to pay our hosting bills, just to be heard.

That’s all I have to say about that.

Why hasn’t SteelerWatch already mentioned that this is the anniversary of Big Ben’s tiptoe through the tulips some old lady’s windshield?  Well, for starters, I don’t care to relive the day.  I was sitting around the house when I got a phone call from one of my closest friends — an Eagles fan, can you believe it? — telling me that the future of the Steelers was now in the past, with Ben lost for the season.  While he’s been known for stretching the truth so thin you could read a cable company’s fine print through it, the fact that Ben had just peeled his own face off the pavement certainly made me worry.  If you ask my wife, she’d probably tell you I spent the day acting like he was my own brother, checking for news updates about every 17 seconds.

Ben himself wants us all to move past it.  It happened, and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that.  But in the end I think we’ll be celebrating this anniversary as the day Ben got his reality check, rather than dreading its coming as the day that ruined a promising young career.

Darkest day, or best day?  What do you think we’ll all be saying ten years from now?  Chime in.

The move from Delaware to Raleigh was a success, and we are settling in nicely.  While my Internet may be sporadic this week, I hope to be fully up and running by next weekend.

So, who’s in Raleigh?  I’d like to hear from you!  Drop a comment, and we’ll open up a Raleigh-specific forum when I get the message board up and running in a week or two.

I just found this out…Clark Haggans’ infant daughter, who was born prematurely in April, is currently waging a battle to stay alive.  I want to extend this opportunity to everyone to post your well-wishes for the family and I will do everything within my (very, very limited) power to attempt to get them sent directly to him via some avenue within the team.  So if you’d like to send the Haggans family some kind words of encouragement or prayers, you can do so right here in a comment.  I encourage everyone to post something.

Moving SteelerWatch — and the entire family — to a new home is going well, but it’s obvious my time to devote to the site has been cut short.  Fortunately news has been slow (fairly regular commenter Seeker recently pointed out that he noticed news had been completely absent for over a week in Steeler Nation) which makes me look like less of a slacker.

So, here’s what’s been going on:

1) The team re-signed running back Verron Haynes Monday to a one-year contract believed to include a veteran league-minimum $595,000 base salary.  There are no details available yet on a signing bonus.

2) Also now under contract with the team are fourth-round pick and uber-punter Dan Sepulveda and fifth-rounder Cameron Stephenson, a guard from Rutgers.  Stephenson will likely be warming the bench this season, because the Steelers have now got decent depth on the offensive line.  Sepulveda, however, will participate in what will, in all likelihood, amount to a mockery of a training-camp battle with perennial August roster filler Matt Barr.  The Steelers are not known for cutting a fourth-round linebacker…err…punter.

And now, around the league:

3) Odel Thurman is potentially in trouble with the law.  It now officialy Goes Without Saying that Thurman is a member of the Cincinnati Bengals; from this point on, if I report a felony and I fail to specify a team, you can simply assume it was the Bengals and you’ll have about 99.95518 percent chance of your assumption being correct.  The remaining 0.04482 percent possibility is reserved for “a current NFL or former college teammate, or a relative, of Mike Vick.”

4) Disgruntled Patriots cornerback — and bearer of the team’s Franchise Player tag — Asante Samuel announced he will not be attending minicamp, training camp, or even the first 10 weeks of the regular season as he cries like a little girl over his numerous millions of dollars holds out in a contract-related dispute.  Apparently unbeknownst to Samuel, holding out is costing him a shot at a long-term deal.  If he hasn’t signed a long-term contract by July 15, he can only sign a one-year contract — exactly what he is eligible for under the franchise tag rules.  Failure to show up for 10 games will cost him nearly $5 million of the $7.79 million he would be due this year as the team’s franchise player.  Holding out the entire season means the Patriots can lock him down again next year — and don’t put it past the Kraft family to do it purely out of spite.