What Training Camp Can't Teach Us About the Pittsburgh Steelers

As of this writing, we are just nine days away from the start of the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp. Camps can teach us many things about teams—who is rising and falling in the depth chart, who is struggling to pick up the offense or defense, how improved (or not) a player looks from one year to the next.

But there are also things that cannot be learned from training camp alone. Here are three questions that camp cannot answer for the Steelers this year.

How Often the Steelers Will Use Chris Rainey

Rookie hybrid running back/wide receiver Chris Rainey already began turning heads at OTAs and minicamp, and the small, speedy player is likely to continue to do so in camp. With Todd Haley as the new offensive coordinator, expect much time at training camp being spent using Rainey in a number of offensive formations to determine the best ways to use him.

However, camp will be a trying-out period for those formations and not a set-in-stone blueprint for when we can expect Rainey to take the field in a real game and make an impact. Rainey's hybrid profile is something the Steelers haven't had on their roster, and it's going to take everyone on that offense to adapt to his style of play.

So while Rainey should see a lot of action in training camp, it doesn't necessarily mean he'll be on the play for every—or even half of—the offensive snaps once the season starts. That's something we simply cannot learn until games are actually being played.

If Todd Haley and the Steelers Offense Will Truly Mesh

While it's true that tempers do flare between coaches and players at training camp, the truest trial-by-fire is during in-game situations, when mistakes can cost a team a win rather than a few more hours of painstaking work to get the play right.

New offensive coordinator Todd Haley has been known for his hair-trigger temper and his propensity to loudly and unabashedly chew out his players for mistakes great and small. That's a far cry from the quiet and supportive style of former coordinator Bruce Arians, who was a favorite among Steelers players for not being so aggressive.

While Haley will likely have outbursts during camp, that's nothing compared to what we're likely to see during the regular season. That's when we'll know how well the Steelers offense has accepted the change from Arians to Haley and how well they respond to such a personality. 

An offensive coordinator is only as successful as the touchdowns his players score, but even if the team performs well under him this year but doesn't particularly enjoy working with him, that could result in tension. But that potential tension won't really come to a head until well into the regular season; what we see in camp cannot be a true indicator of how well the new marriage will work.

What the Future Holds for Rashard Mendenhall

Last week, Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall returned to Twitter to tell the world that his knee is healing "wonderfully" after tearing his ACL in Week 17 of last season. Mendenhall has previous expressed his expectation that he'll be ready to play come Week 1 of this season, which, regardless of how well the recovery is going, is still quite ambitious to say the least.

More than likely, Mendenhall won't be able to participate very much in camp and is a candidate to open the year on the PUP list, which means Isaac Redman will be the Steelers' starting running back for at least the first six weeks of the season.

After that time, however, it's hard to tell what Mendenhall's role will be with the Steelers offense. And because of the nature of the injury and the recovery, there will be little hints in training camp as to what the Steelers' plans are for Mendenhall once he returns.

The only way we can determine what will become of Mendenhall is to watch what Redman and the rest of the Steelers backs accomplish on the field in his absence. If Redman et al., struggle, then the Steelers might be more interested in getting Mendenhall heavily involved from the moment he returns; if they don't, then Mendenhall may slip to Nos. 2 or 3 on the depth chart.

With this being a contract year for Mendenhall, how the other backs perform this year and how much Mendenhall is used once he returns will likely determine if he stays with the Steelers in 2013 and beyond. But because of the injury, there's little chance any of these questions can be answered during training camp.

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