The long dark period that most of you call spring/summer is almost over, and that means one thing and one thing only.
STEEELERS TRAINING CAMP!
They screamed in delight, yelled out his name, asked him to slow down so they could snap more pictures. Ben Roethlisberger heard the ruckus, realized he was the cause of it and could only smile at the attention.
And all he was doing midway through the Pittsburgh Steelers’ first training camp practice Sunday was changing his jersey.
“They were loud, and they were cheering for any little thing that happened,” coach Bill Cowher said of the 10,000-plus fans watching a practice that couldn’t have been more routine, with a few passing and blocking drills and not much else.
That Roethlisberger was back with his teammates, throwing passes to first-round draft pick Santonio Holmes and getting a bit of a scare when he banged his right thumb off a lineman’s helmet, was anything but ordinary.
The youngest quarterback to win the Super Bowl is less than two months removed from a potentially tragic motorcycle accident that easily could have ended his life, and having him back on the field so soon is more than the Steelers and their fans could have expected.
“I got the arm loosened up, and the body, and proved a lot of people wrong,” Roethlisberger said.
Thank goodness football season is almost here!