I hate to pile on former Pittsburgh Steelers tackle Jonathan Scott, but you have to really admire the decisions, and more importantly the timing of those decisions, that the Steelers front office makes.
Not only was Scott not in the plans this year for the Steelers, but his $2.2 million base salary just could not be risked by allowing him to show up at training camp and possibly suffering an injury. Had that happened, the Steelers very well could have faced a scenario where they would have had to eat his entire $2.7 cap hit in 2012. That would have forced some creative cap juggling by Omar Khan, which might have forced his hand into restructuring a contract of another veteran player that wasn\’t necessarily in the cards to do in an effort to free up cap space should they ultimately agree with restricted free agent wide receiver Mike Wallace on a long-term deal.
After Scott was released, he signed with the Detroit Lions, but he reportedly failed his conditioning test upon his arrival to training camp and was thus placed on the non-football injury list as a result. He was eventually removed from the list, but now has apparently suffered some sort of knee injury now as Paula Pasche, Lions beat writer for The Oakland Press, reported today on Twitter that Scott walked thru locker room on Thursday with huge brace on his right knee and was using a crutch to get around with.
Now I, nor should anyone for that matter, should wish ill-will towards Scott and I am sure that he is still good friends with many of his former Steeler teammates. Hopefully his injury is not serious and he is able to get back to work soon. Scott certainly was a whipping boy for the Steeler fanbase while in Pittsburgh and that would have escalated into more than that had he wound up sitting on the Steelers injured reserve list for the entire 2012 season.
The moral of this story? Timing is sometimes everything.
Get well soon, Jonathan.
