A few notes from the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp practice sessions on Monday:
- On Sunday, rookie outside linebacker Thaddeus Gibson impressed during one of Coach Tomlin’s favorite drills, ‘backs on backers’. On Monday, fellow rookie OLB Jason Worilds stood out. From Mark Kaboly’s camp notes:
“Backs on ’backers” is one of coach Mike Tomlin’s favorite drills. Tomlin wanted to see how much his rookie linebackers enjoyed the drill, too.
Jason Worilds and Thaddeus Gibson took a hefty number of reps during the drill, winning much more than they lost.
Worilds beat each one of the most frequently used backs in the drill at least once in Justin Vincent, Isaac Redman and Demetrius Taylor. Tight end David Johnson got the best of Worilds once.
At one point, Tomlin yelled out “Let’s see if anybody can block 97.”
Gibson was just as intense. He was successful against Johnson, Rashard Mendenall and Frank Summers, while he was stood up once by Redman.
“If you are a linebacker and you are shy, you usually have a problem, and I don’t think he has that problem,” Tomlin said of Gibson.
Read on for other tidbits about Ben Roethlisberger’s solid performance, Byron Leftwich’s not-so-stellar day, and other developments on the practice fields of St. Vincent’s College in Latrobe, PA.