Brooke Pryor, ESPN Steelers Reporter, is in NC to talk NFL and QBs

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She is in studio. ESPN. You're a Pittsburgh Steelers reporter.

What's your way more than that? I mean, I've got my Pittsburgh sweatshirt on today. But that doesn't seem to be Steelers as much as you're just repping the city.

That's exactly it. Whenever I'm in Pittsburgh, I wear my North Carolina stuff. Whenever I'm in North Carolina, I wear Pittsburgh.

Just to remind people that I like to have a dual residency between the two. You're one of those people. I am. Listen, my go-to meal, like I was thinking about this the other night, if I had like one meal before I died, it'd be a Cajun filet biscuit with egg and cheese and bow rounds, which I had this morning. But with an icy mango light to drink.

Those, listen, you guys don't know what you're missing. I see mango light. It's an icy light mango. Okay.

I'm getting all my words mixed up because I'm so excited about it. They don't sell it down here, but I've been known to do a little prohibition style pack up my car with some icy light mangoes and drive them down here. Really? So, you know, I could sell them out of the back of my trunk.

Who's to say? So if we knew what car you were driving, we could flag you at the state line. Perhaps you could. Perhaps you could.

That would be outstanding. Now, did you, because in Pittsburgh, they do this. Do you took the, do you put the bow rounds on the Cajun filet biscuit like Primanti Brothers? No.

Because they put the fries on the sandwich. I will never be that yinzer. I promise you.

I like to dip my bow rounds in honey mustard, which I did this morning, and it was glorious. You can take the girl out of North Carolina. All right. Do you want to talk? Are the Steelers going to be? I mean, Mike Tomlin has never been under 500. Never. Never. Nope. Is this the year? No. Okay. And I know that I come into this with Steelard colored glasses, not in the sense that I'm a fan of the team or anything like that, but I've spent what feels like the last 10 months in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

It's really been about three weeks. But every single day I have watched this team through training camp. And they're a good team.

It's a solid roster. The thing that's going to hurt them. This sounds so cliche, but I think the biggest thing that's going to hurt them is themselves, is their style of offense. Can they be explosive enough? Do they need to be explosive enough to keep up with the rest of the division? If they play this balanced style of offense that they want when everybody else is trying to score 40 points a game, this is a team that's probably going to score 20 to 25 on a good day. So they've got to rely on their defense. I feel good about relying on my defense if I have TJ Watt and Cam Hayward, but I'm a little bit concerned about the secondary. They've had some injuries already.

I think that if everyone is healthy, this is a good team. The AFC North is a really good division. I think it's the best division in football. The AFC as a whole, as a conference, is better than the NFC. There's a lot of very good teams. I know that there's a bunch of teams in the AFC East that also feel like they're very good. I think one of them is super overrated, but we'll get to that in a little bit.

I can't imagine who. They just had their practice rained out against the Charlotte Carolina Panthers. But, yeah, in that division, with the way Lamar Jackson is going to try to prove a point, and I know Joe Burroughs out at the beginning of the season, he might miss a regular season game or two or maybe three, but Cincinnati's got a high-powered offense and a good enough defense. And it is about scoring. Defense doesn't win champions. You have to have a good defense, but offense doesn't. I mean, try telling that to Pittsburgh. I think it is so interesting the way that they have constructed this roster that everyone else is zagging and they're zigging.

They're like, all right, that's fine. You can try to score a million points a game. We're going to make sure that doesn't happen because T.J. Watt is going to be a nightmare. Cam Hayward bringing back Larry Ogunjobi was huge. I think that was a very underrated move. And then, I mean, in the secondary, I really like what I've seen from Joey Porter Jr. He's a rookie. He's still a little raw. Legacy.

He's a legacy. And you can tell. I mean, he is so calm in practice.

By the way, there's been no training camp fights in Pittsburgh. And I'm on the sideline like a ring announcer, like, all right, let's go. Come on.

I want to see something. And Mike Tomlin's like, what if we didn't? Right. But he goes up against George Pickens every day. George does insane things and Joey Porter Jr.'s technique is right. He's right there with him.

Everything is right. And George still makes the catch. The other day, George had a catch against Patrick Peterson that it was like in Madden.

One of my good friends was sitting on the sideline. I don't play a lot of Madden. I have unfortunately watched a lot in my time.

Wait, you've watched? When you're married and your husband loves to play Madden, you do sit on the couch. And, you know, if I'm not watching men play football, I'm watching men play football with pretend teams.

You know, it's it's one of those like in sickness and in health and in your Madden obsession. But it's like when the ball goes through the defender on Madden. That's what it looked like. Like Patrick Peterson was face guarding George Pickens and somehow this ball ended up like right in George's belly. And I was like, how did it like a glitch?

But you know what? But that being said, Joey Porter, Jr. had his chain snatched on one of the first days of practice. George kind of got in his face and ripped his chain off as he was either I think was right before he made the catch. He kind of pushed off and pulled it. And Joey didn't swing.

It didn't get heated, nothing. And that's because he comes from, yes, his dad got very heated in games on the sidelines famously so. But he's been there. He's seen that. He knows what those consequences are. He knows how to get fired up and he'll walk right up to that line. And then he backs down.

And I think that that is incredible poise to see as a rookie. So what happened about the chain? I'm just now I'm curious. Listen, I asked Joey about it the next day and he goes, no, it didn't get snatched. It's not broken.

He's like, it's fine. It's just a football play. So Pickens has such good hands that he was able to reach in. He's unclassable. It's wild.

I mean, that's very that's very good. When when the Steelers drafted him, the world should have known that it was a steal because is there a team that has been better at drafting wide receivers, not just in second round, but third round, fourth round? I mean, they have stocked their team with great receivers in later rounds. I don't even know why teams draft wide receivers in the first round based on what the Steelers do on a regular basis.

Yeah. And something about their evaluation process for wide receivers is so spot on, which is also interesting because on the flip side, traditionally, they at least recently have not drafted great corners. And it is kind of funny because they are inverses of each other, but also similar players in a lot of ways. And they got the offense figured out with the traits they want. Can't quite get it figured out on corners, but I think that maybe they've got that with Joey. But yeah, this team is so good at finding these diamonds in the rough. And this year, he's not a wide receiver, but Darnell Washington, my goodness, he big tight end out of Georgia, allegedly supposedly had some kind of medical concern. Darnell says, I didn't miss a game because of an injury.

I don't know what this is floating around there. And I think that he's going to be a sneaky red zone weapon because when he comes in, you know, his whole thing's, oh, he'll be, you know, like a 6-0 lineman, the blocking great. He can pancake guys left and right. But if he gets the ball in the end zone, good luck trying to tackle him. I mean, just sheer momentum and force, he's going to fall into the end zone.

And we've seen that several times in their goal line and short yardage situational practices. Final thing about the Steelers for Brook Pryor from ESPN covers the Steelers, not to make this KDKA or anything like that. But is Kenny Pickett the guy or is somebody else going to maybe steal a spot?

You know, it's Kenny Pickett. I need to see him this year, right? Because I was thinking about that getting back down here to Raleigh this morning. I was thinking like, gosh, the Drake May Circus is going to be crazy here in a couple months. I wonder if I should recommend some restaurants to the Steelers in case things go sideways with Kenny Pickett.

I don't think that they're going to. Because here's the thing. Kenny Pickett has the respect of everybody in that building. And I think the way that he commands himself in games and commands the huddle in games, especially fourth quarter, you're down, you need to drive the field for a touchdown. He's done that, especially late in the season. He is just one of the more poised quarterbacks I've seen. He's incredibly mature. The way that his coaches talk about him, his teammates talk about him. The funniest thing that I've gotten recently is that he got married this summer.

The open bar was a big hit with his teammates. Gunnar Olszewski told me, I mean, listen, apparently he had crazy old fashions that were like smoking and stuff. But he's just somebody asked me like, oh, is he buying the wide receivers like gifts and stuff? And Gunnar's like, no, he's a tightwad with his money like he's he's saving everything. He's going to be a rich man, but obviously, you know, he'll get the alignment gifts and things like that.

But but I hear that and like he's he's right. Kenny's not like a flashy player by any means. He's very much the every man quarterback, but he does hold himself to this high standard when it comes to studying film work on field practices, everything. And so maybe he doesn't have some of the intangibles like a Joe Burrow, like Lamar Jackson. But I think he is going to be a very solid quarterback.

And if he can have a career like a Derek Carr, I know that's not necessarily a sexy name. That's probably not what the what Pittsburgh Steelers fans want to hear when you're in a division with all those quarterbacks. But listen, that's how the Steelers want their team.

They don't. They at this point are not expecting Kenny Pickett to be Patrick Mahomes and the people that they've surrounded him with on both sides of the ball. He doesn't have to be right. They didn't expect Ben Roethlisberger to be what he turned out to be. No, he was third string his rookie year in camp and people got injured.

And it worked out pretty well. And Kenny Pickett also started out third string quarterback this time a year ago and they move him into the starting lineup. He obviously, you know, doesn't win an AFC title and I don't know that the Steelers necessarily Super Bowl bound this year. But listen, we're not going to have two Cinderella stories in one franchise and back to back quarterbacks. Let me get to some other quarterbacks here and some other teams.

Brooke Pryor from ESPN. You talk about poise. I think that pretty much explains or describes what Bryce Young is about. We saw that at Alabama. Aaron Rodgers just, you know, I don't know what they did after practice, but they talked before practice. Rodgers talked glowingly about his calm and all of that. To me, he looks like that we saw this at Alabama.

The moments never too much for him because the game gets fast, but I don't think any game gets fast for him. I have been really impressed with his demeanor. And I think that that's what you get when you draft a quarterback from Alabama because it is. Is Alabama the NFL?

No, but it's about as close as you're going to get to it in the college level. And he's been able to handle the circus of Alabama and the playoffs and everything else. The Heisman Trophy, all of that remarkably well.

You have not heard a single character concern, a single, you know, maturity question, any of that stuff. So I think mentally he's everything you want in a franchise quarterback. My biggest concern still is going to be his size. And I need to see it in a game and I need to see him get through a season without just getting crushed because Kyler Murray, I think Kyler Murray's, you know, there were different concerns with him going on as far as study time, things like that. None of that with Bryce, but they're similarities is that they're both small and that it doesn't matter how mature you are. You know, you're still a small guy and there's injury concerns. There's you know, can you see around your alignment, all of those things. And until I see a full season where it works, I'm going to be skeptical.

My only argument to that is that it hasn't been a problem yet. And at Alabama playing in the SEC, he's seen all that. And this past year, they did not have elite wide receivers. They did not have an elite offensive line. They did not have an elite offense except him. So the counter to because I get all the fears because I talked, you know, as we were leading up to not even as we got toward the draft, once you looked at all the quarterbacks to me, it was obvious that it was Bryce Young. Not because he was like he was there were a lot of teams that would have taken CJ Stroud. But Stroud has the NFL prototype body and so does Levis and so does Richardson.

They all have that. But if we're still talking about Bryce Young as a potential number one pick, then it's not really a conversation because he's five ten, a buck eighty with quarters in his pockets and his clothes soaking wet. And he's still being mentioned. That means that there are so many other things about him. And that's just the evidence kind of leading me to that.

But also never seen, just never seen the moment be too big for him. I'm looking forward to his career. I really am. I think he's going to be fine. But yeah, I mean, Cam Newton could break.

So Bryce Young could break that. You're not. Yeah, you're not wrong. I, I think the ceiling is incredibly high.

I just worry about the floor. Not because of a skill set, but again, the size. And I know like we saw in college and Kyler was fine in college, right? I mean, he was better than fine. Exactly.

And so we've seen before, though, guys that were cheat codes in college, all of a sudden the same code doesn't work in the NFL. I hope it does. I'm, I'm rooting for him. Listen, he's, he's got the Bojangles partnership. I'm trying to get in on that.

That's so smart. I mean, listen, I, I passed on it so that Bryce could have it. You know, they tried to offer me the big box and I was like, no, no, no, you should probably get in good with the new quarterback of the Panthers.

But yeah, I, I'm excited to see what, what he looks like on the field on a Sunday. Jake Dallone started it all with the, he was the first Bojangles guy. Oh, that's my childhood. That is, hey, let me go up the, up the highway a little bit to Washington. On top of the fact that apparently internally they're bringing back the R word, like in the offices. Yeah.

What are you doing, Josh Harris? How long did that fight take to finally get that name out of like that nickname out of the lexicon? They went to something completely dumb and commanders, they should have just stayed Washington football team.

Yeah, that's such a classy name. It would have been great. I actually would have extended it to DCFC, but that's just me being a silly new football fan, new soccer fan. Um, but now apparently Eric Banami is too demanding and like the players don't understand what he's, what? I cannot think of a more annoying storyline or frustrating or just eye rolling.

I rolled my eyes so hard. I thought my contact was going to pop out when I saw that because Rivera clearly meant it as a compliment, but he had to know as soon as you say that, that's something that people are going to latch onto. And then I think it was just handled poorly by having to have the clarification press conference and all this stuff. And I think that Ron Rivera is a very savvy coach, but I think in this moment he thought he was doing the right thing and didn't think through all of the iterations of the consequences of if I say this, how could this kick off a domino effect? And you have to understand that when you're talking about Eric Banami, he comes with so many preconceived notions and narratives that he's trying to fight.

And if in his first year with a new team, you're over here saying like, I don't know, you might be kind of too intense. Would you like some of this water? I would love some.

I'm getting so choked up and upset about Eric Banami just getting thrown under the bus in Washington for simply doing his job. To me, that's where I haven't even discussed this today because we've been doing other things like the ACC is going to add, I believe, the University of Copenhagen, which is I'm looking forward to that road trip. I'll be there for that. The you add an offensive mind like the enemy and then there's going to be some transition issues. There's going to be some growing pains. And so you just say, yeah, it's new to everybody. We're good.

We'll be fine. But Ron kind of maybe he was afraid to throw players under the bus. I don't know. But how do you like, yeah, it's a players have complained about like, what are we doing here? Also, did these players not see any I know that players like, oh, we're not on social media.

We don't do that. The clips of Eric Banami absolutely getting after guys at Chiefs camp go viral every fall. I have also seen it in person. I have witnessed him screaming at dudes. Here's the thing. He's won some Super Bowls. Yeah.

So those Andy Reid. Oh, you're right. What am I saying?

Eric Banami actually just sat in the corner the whole time and said nothing except during training camp when he was screaming at guys for everyone to see. But I kind of feel like you knew what you were getting. Do you want to be great? Or do you want to be great?

Because if you don't want to be great, that's fine. He is like that because he cares. And Eric Banami is someone that I've known since I've been in the NFL. He comes from a good place when he does it.

If he didn't care, he would not ride you so hard. And I don't think from everything that I've heard, he doesn't cross a line, right? This is not an Urban Meyer kicking his kicker situation. This is purely a motivational like Damian Williams, who probably should have been the Super Bowl MVP the first time Patrick Mahomes won it, running back. He was a guy that they had some concerns about as far as work ethic wise, maturity wise, all of these things. And when they brought him in for a free agent visit, Eric Banami pretty much read him the riot act and then continued to stay on him that year. And he had an incredible season.

So again, tough enough. Do you want a Super Bowl ring or do you want to be at home in January and February? Do you think in a way Washington might, this is about Rivera, who I think was the perfect coach for them at the time where they needed somebody who was an adult because it was clear that Daniel Snyder couldn't be that guy. And he's the top of the organization.

There was a child up there and you needed an adult. And that's why he got so much control over everything. Here in Carolina, Rivera was hesitant to like, let the reins go offensively. And he had Cam, right? They were trying and the whole Riverboat Ron thing, they didn't get more dynamic offensively. They really didn't. Well, we went for it on fourth down.

They really just played the percentages, which is all they did. But they still didn't allow the offense to flourish like it should have. Do you think there's some of that where Ron is, his mindset is we're going to play defense and we're just going to do enough offensively because they could be dynamic. I don't know if Sam Howe is the right quarterback. I'm not saying he isn't. I just don't know if he is. But you have Eric the enemy and now our philosophy probably needs to change. Do you think Ron is maybe against that a little bit? I hope that he's not because you don't go out and hire Eric the enemy if you're going to keep the training wheels on. That is a bad fit for the enemy. It's a bad fit for the commanders.

Why would you do that? If again, it kind of goes back to players saying like, oh, no, he's intense runs like, oh, oh, no, he's doing too much offense. Did you did you look at his resume at a time? Did you look at those offenses?

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Again, G-O-L-O.com. I think that it's an adjustment period for everyone involved, but I think that this is something that it feels like Ron committed to turning over a lot of that power to Bien Ami when he hired him and now this is the time where you have to actually put action to those words that you had and it's one of those things where like, hey, it seems like a great idea to be on a diet and meal prep and everything and then you get up and you start making like your meals for the week, like the chicken and rice on Sunday night and you're like, oh my God, I really actually don't want to do this anymore, but you've got to double down and you've got to commit. If it's something you've said you're going to do, there's just an adjustment period and by like week four and you're like, oh yeah, this is just my routine. Right. Don't look at everything in short terms. You have to look at it long term.

Final thing because we're out of time, but I'll extend a little bit and I will give you the option. Do you want to talk about running backs who can't get contract because that's been a major off season issue or do you want to talk about the fact that with all of the hoopla, the Jets are probably still not going to make the playoffs? Oh gosh. You choose.

Oh gosh. Let's talk about the Jets. I'm so, so sorry to Mike Greenberg.

It's fine. I love when he's happy, but gosh, we don't, I used to be a Jets fan. We realize I'm a recovering Jets fan come flaunt it, but whenever Greenberg would come on and would be a lot, we've already, we spoke to him about a month and a half ago or so. We would do Jets corner. We actually had a sounder for it.

We would do Jets corner. So all right. Here's the thing. Hard knocks was, I saw someone say on Twitter, it was one big Aaron Rogers infomercial. And it was, and it had me believe in a little bit. And then I saw that press conference that he gave after that joint practice when he was frustrated with guys and effort and everything else. And I was like, huh, I feel like I just heard that across the country. This feels so familiar. And it's one of those things where similar to the Eric Bienemy stuff, it all sounds great in practice. And then you get out there and you realize, Ooh, things are not what I expected.

I think the offensive line is one of the biggest things that that is going to be a problem. If you're Aaron Rogers, like you kind of expect that, you know, Hey, I'm here, I'm elevating this team. I have now given him some salary back. This is, you know, my Goodwill, good faith, whatever.

Now use that money. Who are they going to get right now? I mean, I know Zach Martin's disgruntled in Dallas, but I don't, as much as Jerry Jones seems like he doesn't want to pay him, he is not going to give them to the Jets.

No, not at all. Why would he do that? The Jets would be more than happy to take him. Exactly. Oh yeah.

Welcome him with open arms. But you're, you're getting late in the process to make a seismic move that will keep Aaron Rogers upright more than the line that he has in front of him. I mean, this, this team has pieces obviously. But much similar to the AFC North, that AFC East, who, who do you leave out? You know, I, the Patriots are, you know, French, right? But between the Bills, the Dolphins, and the Jets, two of those teams have a more established nucleus, more established coaching, everything else.

The Aaron Rogers experiment is either going to go wonderfully or terribly. I don't think there's an in between, and in fact, I would say the in between means that it's terrible because there are so, the expectations are so high that if you miss the playoffs, that's embarrassing. Pack it up, go home. Week one against the Bills is a must win.

Yeah. At home. You have to win the game. Because the early part of the schedule is very difficult. The Jets have to get off to a good start. I'd say welcome home, but you're leaving soon, right? To go back to Pittsburgh. I sure am because listen, football season starts and as much as I would love Roger Goodell to relocate an NFL franchise to rally, hasn't happened yet. No one at the league office. Take it to Ting Park. See?

I think it's a perfect idea. The league office does not return my calls on that or anything else for that matter. But you know, what are you going to do?

Brook Pryor from ESPN. I hope to see you in studio all season long on the network. On Get Up. On Get Up. On Get Up.