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Wednesday, August 06, 2008

OK, now Roethlisberger will play

Ben Roethlisberger must have lobbied hard Tuesday. Mike Tomlin said today Roethlisberger will play a series in the team's preseason opener against Philadephia.

The first-team line will play the first quarter, presumably while Charlie Batch is still in there. After that, the game will be in the hands of Dennis Dixon and Mike Potts.

Sean Mahan will get the start at center, while Tomlin said today that Justin Hartwig will start next week against Buffalo at Toronto.

Tomlin finally said he wants to have his starter in place by the third preseason game at that position.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a quick question that is sort of irrelevant here, but what were the terms with Hartwig's deal?

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear Ben will get a series. Hopefully he and the first team will get at least a couple next week in Toronto... I'll be at the game. ;)

Anonymous said...

Dale, Has there been any talk about Simmons trying out at Center again? If Hartwig is having trouble unseating Mahan, we may need to look somewhere else. We can get anyone to play RG. Idealy, although it won't happen, I'd have Smith-Kemo-Simmons-Colon-Starks.

Those seem like the best 5 to me if Simmons can play Center at all.

Dale Lolley said...

Two years, $4 million on Hartwig.

They killed the Simmons at center thing last year

Anonymous said...

I am glad they are going to get Ben a series. That boy sure as heck wants to play through everything, doesn't he? Anyway, I see that according to you, they gave up on Simmons being the center. Any reason why?

Dale Lolley said...

They just felt more comfortable with Kendall at guard than they would at center. When it was brought up to a front office guy in the offseason, he told me it was dead.

Anonymous said...

It's too bad the Simmons thing didn't work out... Our right side could be pretty strong in the running game behind Starks and Colon. I always thought Simmons would be a solid C.

Jamie said...

How is William Gay looking this year?

Dale Lolley said...

Gay is OK. He hasn't been jumping out a lot like he did last year, but it can be a good thing when you don't notice a cornerback a lot. That means he's not getting burned.