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Tuesday, July 29, 2003

By Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

On a team that boasts Hines Ward, Plaxico Burress and Antwaan Randle El, there’s not many opportunities at wide receiver.

	Wide receiver Lee Mays played in all 16 games last season, mostly on special teams. (Matt Freed, Post-Gazette)

Lee Mays is trying to make the most of what there is.

He did not catch a pass as a rookie last season, but he has caught everything that has come near him in the early days of training camp, taking up where he left off in minicamp.

When Mike Mularkey installs the four wide-receiver offense into practice today, Mays will take his turn at No. 4.

Yesterday morning, he made a leaping catch over the middle at full speed that was reminiscent of John Stallworth.

“That’s real good to see,” Mularkey said. “He needs to carry that into a game. He’s going to have his chances, there’s no doubt about that.”

Mays played all 16 games with the Steelers last season, mostly on special teams, after they drafted him in the sixth round from Texas El-Paso.

He caught 71 passes as a junior but fell off to 53 as a senior with a new quarterback, and the Steelers may have gotten a bargain because of it.

He stands 6 feet 2, weighs 192 pounds and can fly.

“He has deceptive speed,” Mular- key said. “He can really run for a big guy. He has good hands. I think he can be a physical player, that’s yet to be seen because he hasn’t had a chance to do it. When he gets in there, I’d like to see how he’s going to do.”

Mays also returned 32 kickoffs for the Steelers last season. Chris Doering, a sixth-year veteran, signed May 20 as a free agent and will compete with Mays for the No. 4 receiver spot.

Not same old field

Not quite a field of dreams, but it looked like one when the Steelers practiced yesterday surrounded by cornfields.

St. Vincent College carved a new practice field into a cornfield on a hilltop above Rooney Hall, where the Steelers live during training camp. They used that field for the first time yesterday morning.

“I like it,” Coach Bill Cowher proclaimed. “The Field of Dreams. You like that? I told them if you run and go into the cornstalks and you disappear, you must be a legend. They all keep coming back out, though. It’s a great setup, I like those fields up there.”

Scout Bob Lane joked that, “At the end of practice, you may see a group of old players walk out of the corn.”

One of those old players watched in amazement as the current Steelers were taken by air-conditioned jitneys between the field and their locker room.

“We didn’t even have air-conditioned rooms when I was here,” said former guard Craig Wolfley, a member of the Steelers’ broadcast team.

“Now, they have air-conditioned buses to take them to practice. I’m jealous.”

More fan-friendly

The crowds seem slightly larger at Steelers practices this training camp than they have in the recent past, and many of the fans are being rewarded for it.

Players always have signed autographs after practice, but they have been spending more time doing so this summer after Cowher talked to them about it the first night of camp.

“We appreciate the fans coming up here to St. Vincent,” Cowher said. “These are long days; when you get the people out here who are coming out and hollering, it gets you going. I think our players appreciate them. That’s why we’re in this business.

“The little time we can spend with them on the way up to the locker room, we try to do that.”

Hands-on approach

Cowher, the old special teams coach, stepped into the middle of a punting practice to show players how he wanted some things done.

“Usually, something provokes that,” Cowher said. “It’s just part of training camp. The biggest thing for all these guys -- and I told them at the end -- is I don’t care how long you’ve been in this league, when you’ve been off for six months and you put the pads on for the first time, you’re all playing too high. People aren’t using their hands.

“The little things are still the foundation of football. I don’t care what position you play or how long you’ve been in it, you have to reacclimate yourself to the game and the speed of the game.”

Turning to Stone

Dwight Stone, who made the Steelers as a free agent from Middle Tennessee State in 1987 and went on to play 14 years in the NFL, is spending the first week of training camp helping to coach their special teams.

Stone is a member of a special team himself these days, but wears a different uniform. He has been working for over a year as a police officer for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg department in North Carolina.

Stone was a running back in college with blazing speed -- someone actually timed him under 4.2 seconds in the 40 -- but unpolished. The Steelers converted him to a wide receiver, and he played through 1994 with them and later joined the Carolina Panthers.

He and Bubby Brister share a Steelers record with two other quarterback-receiver combinations for the longest pass in club history. It went for 90 yards at Denver in 1990.