The bad news is that the defense is even more banged up than any of us knew, like Tomlin made clear

yesterday in his press conference that Alex Highsmith and Isaiah Loudermill, are both going to miss

this weekend's game in Foxborough

with high ankle sprains.

He characterized as Sean Elliott, Derek Harmon, and Joey Porter all as, quote, questionable at best.

That's to say nothing of Patrick Queen and Darius Slay being banged up.

That's the bad news.

And the good news, I don't know.

Give me a second to try to think of some good morning to you.

Good Wednesday morning.

I'm Dan Kovach of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

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The Practice Week, preparing for the Patriots,

this Sunday at Gillette Stadium,

begins this afternoon, and it'll begin with way more questions than answers having been addressed to date and those questions probably

couldn't have been anticipated by anybody entering this season.

Chiefly, how has this defense been so brutally bad?

I'm not here to revisit any remarks that anybody made in the summertime,

whether it was the Mike Tomlin historic thing,

...