Parkergate solved

We’ve gotten to the bottom of Parkergate here at the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp.

Head coach Mike Tomlin was told by trainers Tuesday that Willie Parker’s sore left knee was no big deal. But the soreness lingered into today, hence Tomlin’s proclaimation Tuesday that Parker was only going to sit out a day.

It doesn’t appear to be a long-term problem and there’s no damage or anything like that.

Also not practicing this afternoon were Lawrence Timmons – of course – James Harrison and Darnell Stapleton.

Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was also given some rest during the passing drills in an effort by Tomlin to rest his arm. Charlie Batch will be given similar treatment Thursday.

The team got a bit of a scare during 11-on-11 when Jovon Johnson and Larry Foote collided in coverage of John Dekker. Both Johnson and Foote took several moments to get up off the field. Dekker, meanwhile, was unable to leap high enough to haul in the pass from Bryan Randall despite being wide open.

In an interesting twist to the offensive line versus defensive line blocking drills, instead of just having one guy rush and one guy block, the team today practiced with two of each rushing. The defenders would stunt and the offensive linemen would pass them off to each other. It was pretty neat to watch and seems like a pretty good drill to work on, though I’d never seen it before.