SteelerWatch

All in all, it was a good minicamp from most indications. Even though Alan Faneca, the latest Pittsburgh goat, pitched a fit to the media prior to the start of camp — ever since the hiring of Mike Tomlin, really — the whole thing went off without a hitch.

I know this, because no one in Pittsburgh media made more than a peep about it all weekend.

Every now and again, I make my way northwest to a little town about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh — my hometown, crammed unceremoniously at the approximate midpoint on route 30 between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. From Friday night through Sunday afternoon, I didn’t hear a single mention of minicamp. Not on television. Not in any newspaper. Not even in town (even though I only spent about 15 minutes there). And that means Alan behaved, for the most part.

Oh, he got upset Saturday morning. Someone made some sort of crack to him, or maybe about him but within earshot. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for certain. But in typical NFL star, holier-than-thou fashion, Faneca disappeared from morning practice. After his pouting and self-imposed timeout, and following a talk with Tomlin, he returned and completed the rest of camp.

He still wants out. Unfortunately, a bunch of overpaid guards this off-season forced the Steelers’ hand. Guys who will only make it to a Pro Bowl if they can get tickets are now being paid millions more than our once-beloved leader, and now he wants to be in that club. So be it. Like every other player on every other sports team, he’s replaceable. It won’t be easy — it will probably hurt a lot, actually — but he will be replaced. And the Steelers will keep on keeping on amongst the league’s elite. I once called him vital to the team’s success, and he has been. But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. For Alan, that means getting paid by a team desperate enough to shell out $5 million-plus per season to a guy with nine seasons on his frame. For Tomlin, Dan Rooney, Kevin Colbert and the entire Steelers organization, it means replacing yet another highly gifted cog with someone younger and somehow (hopefully) not missing a beat.