Football in shorts, as Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin would be the first to remind, is not football. But it’s the closest thing that you get to NFL football during the months of May and June, so you make do with what is on hand.
That’s all players like wide receiver Hakeem Butler can do. Fresh off of an XFL season in which he was one of the league’s best receivers, the former fourth-round draft pick is hoping to resurrect his NFL dreams after signing with the Steelers.
It didn’t hurt, as Chris Adamski recounted in a recent article for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, that he apparently made a pretty snazzy catch or two during OTAs last week, but he’s going to need plenty more of those over the course of the summer if he wants to earn a spot on the 53-man roster—which he already knows more than most.