This year’s visit to Latrobe is shaping up as the most interesting yet

I’m packing up the family this week and making my annual pilgrimage to Steelers training camp. This will be our fourth straight year of road-tripping to Latrobe, as we’re all-in on making this work stop an unofficial vacation.

Our first trip was in 2022. We went south out of Jersey and spent a couple of nights in Charlottesville, then bent north to Pittsburgh. In the city, we took in a Pirates game and visited Kennywood. We weren’t in the park five minutes when my daughter won a giant stuffed unicorn playing some carnival game. I carted that thing around for the next six hours. We also bought a family photo of the four of us plunging down a rollercoaster screaming like lunatics. It was so spectacular we sent it out as our Christmas card.

2022 was a special trip. I’d been to plenty of Steelers’ games before, but never to camp. Cresting the hill out of the parking lot to glimpse the manicured practice fields, and the neatly-trimmed “St Vincent” carved into the shrubs along the far sideline, it’s hard not to get a “Field of Dreams” vibe. There was a buzz around Kenny Pickett then, and some intrigue surrounding Mitch Trubisky. I took far too many notes and wrote an article that was about 1,000 words too long for the old Behind The Steel Curtain site. The novelty of it all.

Oh, my son also hit me up for a Pickett jersey in the merchandise tent, which seemed like a good investment at the time.

In 2023, our trip took on a different tone. My son was now playing for an AAU basketball team, and they had a tournament in Lancaster the first weekend of August. We decided to tie that in with our training camp visit and loop through Pennsylvania. Out to Gettysburg, where I’d gone to college, then Latrobe, then Hershey Park on our way back east to the tournament.

Training camp practice was cut short the day we visited by a nasty thunderstorm. The storm clouds seemed to match the mood around the team. Pickett would light things up in Pittsburgh’s pre-season games that year, but the fans I spoke with at camp had already soured on him. Most believed the Steelers had reached for him in the draft, and that, despite engineering some exciting fourth-quarter wins as a rookie, he was not the long-term answer. That left me depressed. We scrambled to our car as the storm broke, passing through the merch tent. My son somehow talked me into another jersey. Najee Harris this time. Which depressed me further.

With practice cut short, and having already checked out of our hotel, we visited the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville. Sobering and powerful, to say the least. Back in the car, my family slept for most of the drive to Hershey, and I spent the time buried in my thoughts — about the Steelers, and after visiting Gettysburg and Shanksville, about things like politics, patriotism and mortality.

Last year, we changed it up again. We went north through Philadelphia, where we caught a Phillies game. Then some hiking in the Poconos, followed by a night in State College. My son and I threw the football together in the shadow of Beaver Stadium, and he talked about what it must be like to play a game there in front of 100,000 screaming fans, with dreams in his eyes.

In Latrobe, there was a different vibe around the Steelers. Pickett was gone, Justin Fields and Russell Wilson were the team’s new quarterbacks, and the buzz was back. Wilson, recovering from a calf injury, did not practice, so Fields garnered the spotlight. I paid him some attention, but I was more interested in watching linebacker Patrick Queen, who stood out with his speed and explosiveness. Hulking tight end Darnell Washington was fun to watch, too. It was also the debut of the Arthur Smith offense, which after two years of whatever Matt Canada had been doing, was delightful in that it fit together and made sense.

Oh, and the merch tent? The kid got me for a George Pickens tee shirt. 0-for-3.

On each of those trips, our family became more of a family. We etched in deeper memories. I loved them all. This year feels different, though. The Steelers part of it. It feels like the first year in a while that, well, maybe.

In 2022, they were moving on from Roethlisberger. There was intrigue in Pickett, and in the “Matt Canada Offense,” but it was a Steelers team in transition. Maybe they could make the playoffs. But a championship? No.

In 2023, the mood was sour. Few believed Pickett was the answer, and that cast a cloud, both figuratively and literally, over Latrobe. This was not a championship team, and it still didn’t have its franchise QB.

In 2024, the outlook brightened. There were changes on offense and some new faces in town. The team was better. But a championship? With Wilson or Fields at quarterback? With Van Jefferson as WR2? With Donte Jackson as a starting corner? Not yet.

2025, though. I’m not holding my breath on it. I’m not placing any bets. But Aaron Rodgers, even at 41 years old. And DK Metcalf. And Jalen Ramsey. And Slay. I mean, it’s not impossible, right? For the first time since 2020, there’s a vibe. Not all that powerful. But a vibe, nonetheless. Which makes my trek to Latrobe all that more interesting.

We’ll do some other fun stuff, too. Whitewater rafting, another basketball tournament. But, if I’m being honest, Latrobe is the centerpiece. It’s the most excited I’ve been to cover camp, and the greatest intrigue I’ve had in a Steelers season in years.

Just as long as my son stays away from the merch tent.

Stay tuned for all my reports, and drop a note in the comments if you have something particular you want me to monitor. I’ll be there on Wednesday, and will have detailed reports on my “Call Sheet Daily” podcast and here at SCN on Thursday.