Practice report: July 28

LATROBE, Pa. – It turns out, Mother Nature is a Steelers fan, too. At least that’s the way things worked out on Thursday.

The area’s weather forecast for the second day of practice at Saint Vincent College was ominous, and the visual of the sky in the early afternoon was worse than the forecast. The rain began to fall right around the scheduled 1:55 p.m. start time for practice, and so the Steelers adapted and moved their base of operations to the artificial turf field so as not to destroy the grass playing surface on the other three.

At 2:05 p.m., the rain picked up. It was raining hard at 2:11 p.m., and it wouldn’t be a stretch to describe what started happening four minutes later as a downpour. But that was brief, and by 2:19 p.m. the worst of it was over, and then the grounds crew and some ballboys began the process of removing the tarp that was covering the grass. The rain stopped, and by 3:13 p.m. the tarp had been removed completely.

In the meantime, the Steelers continued to go about their business on the artificial turf, and one of the returning items of business for this particular session was 7-Shots. Not a part of Wednesday’s practice, the familiar drill was back, and the offense won this installment, 4-3.

Breaking it down, Mitch Trubisky completed a pass to Chase Claypool for a touchdown, and it was 1-0 offense. On the next snap, Trubisky appeared to complete a pass to Zach Gentry, but it seemed as though before the ball was secured, Devin Bush flashed by and ripped it away for an interception. These kinds of disputes – whether the offense took a 2-0 lead on that play or whether the defense tied it, 1-1 – will be determined officially after evening film study. For the purposes of this deadline, it’s being scored 1-1.

Trubisky completed a pass to Anthony Miller, and it’s 2-1 for the offense. After a Trubisky completion to Gentry, it was 3-1 for the offense, and Mason Rudolph took over at quarterback. Rudolph threw incomplete to Steven Sims, and it…