LATROBE (93-7 THE FAN) — The Steelers officially kicked off the 2013 season with the start of training camp at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe on Friday. The players trickled in all day in a variety of luxury vehicles, but most knew the best would arrive when Brett Keisel arrived. Last year, he showed up in an orange Kubota front-loading tractor. This year, he didn’t hold anything back.

The 12-year veteran rolled up to his dorm in a black-and-yellow dump truck and dumped his luggage onto the ground. Sporting a “Da Beard” t-shirt and a #99 Steelers hard hat, he hopped down from the truck full of energy.

“Since it’s kind of a construction zone here I brought my hard hat,” Keisel said. “We are constructing our team. We are excited about this year. I think everyone has written us off but we feel like we can construct, hopefully, a championship team.”

Keisel said to achieve that goal, a lot of responsibility is going to fall on the new guys with the loss of several veterans. And training camp is the place to see what they are made of.

“Training camp is hard, especially for the young guys because they are the ones taking most of the reps and they are the ones that the coaches want to see either succeed or show that they can’t do it,” said Keisel. “So I’m excited to watch them and I’m excited to see the strong ones rise up and do stuff that is going to help us win games and I think we are going to be tough.”

Coming off of an 8-8 season, he said the team has a lot to prove, and for Keisel, this could be his last season. This is the final year of his contract, and although he said he doesn’t know what the future holds, he does know one thing: he wants to go out on top.

“I’m going to go out and give it my all and have fun and see what happens,” Keisel said. “Twelve seasons in the NFL is pretty good, especially when you get to do it with a great organization as the Pittsburgh Steelers. We’ve brought a couple trophies home and let’s bring another one home.”

Listen to the entire interview with Keisel here:

