This post has nothing to do with Ike Taylor and Antonio Brown punching each other because who cares. Pirates baseball has distracted us from training camp and honestly there isn't anything current worth talking about besides backup fullbacks.

This month, Yahoo" Sports' hockey blog, Puck Daddy, is running a feature called "The Essentials" in which a blogger details the single most important player/coach/moment/game in their franchise's history. Why not do that for the Steelers?

Presenting: The Pittsburgh Steelers Essentials!

Player

 
"Mean" Joe Greene was the Steelers' first draft pick in 1969, the first person Chuck Noll brought to the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was raw but talented. He had some very overt anger issues that led to him starting fights, playing dirty, and threatening to walk out on the hapless Steelers. But Chuck Noll molded him and taught him to turn that aggression into intensity on the field. He set a new standard of defense not only for the Steelers, but in the NFL. No one could run the ball against him. Quarterbacks couldn't stay upright against him. He and his linemates were unblockable. He became the icon, the face of a franchise that had been meandering aimlessly through its own existence for forty years. The Steelers were built around the greatest defense football has every seen (or will ever see). The defense was built around the front 7. The front seven was built around it's line. And the defensive line was built around Joe Greene. With all due respect to Dwight White, Ernie Holmes, and LC Greenwood, there was one defensive tackle who belongs atop the list of all-time greats in this city. Joe Greene is the greatest Steeler to have ever put on the pads.

Jump for the rest!

Knees don't bend sideways. The Steelers' starting fullback is going to miss the 2012 season with a torn ACL in his right knee. Not much you can take out of a preseason game, other than this is something you don't want. Mike Adams and Jon Dwyer also got banged up, but their injuries aren't presumed to be serious. Hope they sign Lousaka Polite.

Other stuff:

• The starting defense was on the field for three snaps. The Eagles' offense lost five yards. Good. That's all we need from them in preseason.
• Shaun Suisham is still around, and he kicked some field goals. Okay.
• Steve McLendon looked good, which is nice because we're going to see a lot of him this year.
• Todd Haley's opening drive told a lot. Quick, high-percentage passes, and a commitment to the running game. Good to know that's what they've been working on.

Not much else worth saying about the first preseason game.

The NFL needs to pay the regular referees whatever they want, by the way. Refs' union has infinite leverage right now. These replacement officials are a liability. Ben almost strangled one when he hesitated to flag that hit Rogers-Cromartie put on Byron Leftwich's face.

Steelers' next game is Sunday the 19th. Bruce Arians returns to Heinz Field with Andrew Luck in tow.

Most people have long ago done some sort of analysis of the Todd Haley hire, but here I’ll be looking at stats that are off the beaten path, so at the very least it’ll be a new perspective. The big thing to be noticed is that Haley hasn’t done a lot of playcalling relative to the length of his career, so for that much-anticipated aspect of being offensive coordinator for the Steelers, there isn’t much to look at to predict how Haley will fare, but the years he did (2008-2009), the results are somewhat encouraging. I’ll start by looking at Haley’s stints as wide receivers coach no comments

File this one under 'strange but true.' A Steelers fan attended the training camp of the Indianapolis Colts in Anderson, Ind. and was forced to wear an Andrew Luck jersey by head coach Chuck Pagano (former Raven) after arriving in a black James Harrison jersey. 

Pagano was alerted to the fan by Colts safety (and former Raven) Tom Zbikowski (anybody else noticing a pattern here?). The fan was told either to put on the Andrew Luck jersey or be asked to leave. I'm not positive if Pagano was being good natured or not, but given that the Steelers fan was able to meet Bruce Arians and Mewelde Moore after practice, I'd say it was all done in fun. 

Still, it is pretty bizarre for a coach and a team to single out somebody in the crowd like that and even joke about forcing them to leave for donning another team's colors. I've been to training camp in Latrobe dozens of times and can't even fathom something like that occurring at Steelers training camp. 

On a personal note, Colts training camp actually takes place at my alma mater Anderson University. There are always a handful of kids from western Pennsylvania who end up out there and I have to wonder if the (un)lucky fan was a displaced college student like I once was. 

This isn't something that you'd ever expect from the Colts, who have been one of the classiest organizations in the league for a long time. But Pagano developed a deep hatred for Pittsburgh while in Baltimore and coupled with Bruce Arians as his offensive coordinator, the Colts seem like they wouldn't mind striking up a heated rivalry with Pittsburgh. 

Kevin Colbert told Ed Werder of ESPN over the weekend that the Steelers won't trade disgruntled WR Mike Wallace. 

The two sides appear to be very far apart and the Steelers are preparing to move on without him. Wallace is under contract for the 2012 season and, if the Steelers decide not to trade him, he faces the prospect of sitting out the rest of the season.  

Pittsburgh has long had a policy of not negotiating with holdouts. They'll talk, but only on ownerships terms. Hines Ward held out for 15 days in 2005 before finally reporting to camp. A new deal was reached shortly after Ward arrived in Latrobe.  

Wallace has no leverage in this situation and I believe 100% that the Steelers are prepared to play the season without him. Much has been made about how Wallace's absence will hamper the offense, but the bottom line is that you want to go to battle each week with players who want to be there. Wallace doesn't.

My guess is that he'll report towards the end of training camp and that a long term deal will be worked out. These holdouts usually get everybody up in arms and end with the player reporting and then signing. It is very rare for a player to actually sit out an entire season and I don't see that happening here at all. 

 

It's normally a pretty slow time for football news, but the past few days have given us a few minor things to make a note of.

• Joey Porter will retire as a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers. (Trib)

This is nice to see. Joey Porter was the unquestioned leader of the team while he was here, and his achievements will not be forgotten. Say what you will about his constant mouthing-off, but he backed up everything he said and you wanted Joey Porter on your team. Seeing him leave was tough on the fans, but James Harrison was ready to take over and outperform him. Still, it's nice to see a guy like Porter come back to Pittsburgh for his final press conference. We're looking forward to seeing him on TV and maybe someday in Canton.

•  Troy Polamalu should probably be dead by now. (ESPN)

Scary interview with Polamalu on the Dan Patrick show. Polamalu admits to regularly hiding concussions so he can keep playing football. Considering everything that's been happening with the NHL and NFL regarding brain damage in retired players over the past two years, you have to seriously question Polamalu here. It's not okay to hide a concussion, and Troy has no reason to. It's not like he's in danger of being cut, like some marignal players who hide concussions are. Players everywhere need to take better care of themselves in this regard. Let's just hope Polamalu doesn't end up as the poster child for why.

•  On a lighter note, the Steelers brought back Max Starks again! (PG)

This move shores up a weakness on the offensive line. Rather than having a first and second year player starting at tackle in Marcus Gilbert and Mike Adams, Max Starks can come in and play the left side while Gilbert stays at right, and Adams won't be thrown into the fire right away. Starks is coming off an injury but apparently has a clean bill of health now.

• The University of Pittsburgh will escape the Big (L)East next summer. (Trib)

WVU paid $20 million to get out. Pitt, Syracuse, and TCU paid $20 million combined. As a Pitt student, I find this tremendously entertaining.

There's also the PSU stuff but we're not touching that.

When life gets you down, remember the Steelers managed to draft David DeCastro.

Training camp opens in less than a week. We gave up on the daily countdown, but be honest: you didn't miss it. Now it's time for us to start flexing our blogging muscles again. We're comin' back. 

There's a good reason we don't post very much for most of May-July. It's because nothing happens in the NFL. We could stage a stakeout of Mike Wallace's contract negotiations, but it's been far more interesting to follow NHL free agency and the upstart Pittsburgh Pirates (that felt good to type). After that little bit of buzz about American Football as an Olympic sport, we briefly kicked around the idea of making up Team USA's roster. Then we remembered that everyone who plays American football is pretty much American and that was the end of that.

Given that nothing is going on, I decided it's time to reflect on a season that we have already forgotten most of the details about, aided by a series of mostly sarcastic game recaps by yours truly. What DID happen in 2011? Was that the season we missed a bunch of FGs in Chicago? Wait, no, that was 2009. The loss to the Packers wasn't lat year, was it? Or that late game TD to Mike Wallace to beat those Packers in the regular season? They all run together. So let's break it down, week by week:

I'm several weeks late on this, but Wiz Khalifa's new music video "Work Hard Play Hard" is a pretty solid tribute to Pittsburgh. There are shots of steel workers, shop owners...and Pittsburgh native Steve Breaston.

Breaston graduated from Woodland Hills High School in 2003. He was an excellent football and track athlete. He went on to star at Michigan. Breaston's one of the better WPIAL graduates playing in the NFL today.