Rain sends Steelers players indoors; 1st padded practice will wait till Wednesday

For the third time in five days of training camp for the Pittsburgh Steelers, the weather provided an alteration of the schedule.

And for the first time since the Steelers reported to Saint Vincent last week, the team was forced to practice indoors.

“We didn’t get what we were looking for today, but such is life in football and life in general,” coach Mike Tomlin said.

A heavy rainstorm hit the campus at approximately 2 p.m. Tuesday, and practice — the first scheduled one in pads — was postponed a few minutes later. Tomlin relocated his players to the gymnasium for a closed workout. Fans had to evacuate the metal bleachers, and it was announced a little while later that the campus was closed.

“At this stage of team development, you can always extract some positives out of all circumstances,” Tomlin said. “It gave us an opportunity to take it to the gym and work our way through our format. It’s almost always an opportunity to get better. A rep at something and some level of adjustment, whether individually or collectively. We went through our script in the gym, got some productive work done.”

The Steelers will return to a standard practice routine at 1:55 p.m. Wednesday. It will be the first time the players practice in pads.

Steelers players had been looking forward to the first chance to hit someone on the other side of the ball. Popular individual drills such as backs-on-backers and one-on-one line drills were scheduled.

“No question,” Tomlin said when asked whether his players were antsy. “I’d much rather say whoa than sic ’em. It was appropriate to say whoa. We got a lot of water dumped on those fields in a short period of time. It wouldn’t have been safe to do it today.”

Tomlin also said the turf field at Saint Vincent wasn’t an option.

During the heat acclimation period, the Steelers had a few minutes shaved off late team portions of practice when inclement weather hit the campus.