A couple of notes from this morning's session:
James Farrior took the morning off, giving second year LB Lawrence Timmons an opportunity to work with the first team. According to Dale Lolley, Timmons looked great ($):
With the team practicing a lot of inside runs, Timmons got the opportunity to show his wares sticking his nose in the middle and he really looked good flowing to the ball. He also showed that he’s willing to jump into the hole and take on blockers.
Timmons looks so much more comfortable this year than he was last season.
Rookie Limas Sweed apparently looked more like the rook that he is in comparison to yesterday afternoon's stand-out performance. Lolley noted that Sweed muffed two consecutive Charlie Batch throws, the first one being a pass that was near the shoelaces. Now's a good time to note that from the dozens of games that I have seen Sweed play, low passes were most certainly not his forte. I would say that Big Ben is above average in terms of consistently delivering throws into the breadbaskets of his receivers, but when he's on the run, one can't expect him to constantly be delivering passes on the money. Sweed's going to need some work getting to the level of his running mates Hines and Santonio on catching not-quite-perfect passes.
Quick aside here: did anybody else love the Steelers throwback uniforms that were on display last season against Baltimore? I sure did, and I can't wait to see them unveiled again when we play the Giants in September and the Ravens in October.
Punter Daniel Sepulveda was at practice joshing with teammates this morning. Lolley noted that perhaps he and the team are awaiting a second opinion before officially shutting him down for the year. On a similar note, replacement punter Paul Ernster did not impress in the morning's lone special teams session.
For those of us, myself included, who thought that the camp and pre-season battles for the offensive line starting spots would be drawn out and intense, perhaps we were wrong. From Larry Zeirlein, our offensive line coach:
“We’re pretty well set,” he said of the line, which gave up 53 sacks in 17 games last season and lost Pro Bowl guard Alan Faneca to free agency. “We’ll see what happens with the center thing once we get into preseason, but I’d say we’re pretty well set.”
Hmm. Really?
More later.