[St Louis Rams News]

PITTSBURGH -- Ryan Clark has a warning for fans traveling to St. Vincent College to watch practice this summer.

“It’s terrible as a spectator to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers practice in 2007,” Clark said. “I can’t imagine the fans are going to be happy.”

Why?

“There are a million more special teams,” he said as the Steelers’ special-teams-driven Organized Team Activities reached the halfway point of the spring schedule.

“We actually didn’t even have special teams at OTAs last year – at all,” Clark said. “We did a little bit at walk-through. But it makes practices a lot longer and a lot harder.”

And a lot more boring to watch. The Steelers warm up, they stretch, and then they scrimmage for a bit. They’ll break for at least 20 minutes of special-teams work, scrimmage some more, then break for more special-teams work.

As much as the Steelers talked up the importance of special teams under Bill Cowher, they never backed it up with this kind of action on the practice field.

“Oh, for this time of year it’s definitely a lot more,” said special-teams co-captain Clint Kriewaldt. “From what I remember I don’t think we even did any at this time. Maybe in OTAs we’d do a punt or something like that, but in minicamps we never had any time for special-teams stuff. It’s different now. We have 20-minute meetings and then at least 20 minutes on the field. We get it before and during. It’s definitely a lot more than what we’re used to.”

Scout.com: Steelers putting in the time on special teams

[Lefty Noob]

Sounds like a unique approach. Will this have a positive impact on the team, or is it just time wasted?