Stop me if you have heard this one before: Pittsburgh Steelers restricted wide receiver Mike Wallace will report soon.
Well, it appears the rumblings are indeed growing louder that “soon” is now right around the corner as Bill Phillips of WPXI TV reports via Twitter on Wednesday that fellow wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders said that there is a buzz around the team right now that Wallace will indeed report “soon”.
To further fuel the idea that “soon” is right around the corner now, Mark Kaboly of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported Wednesday afternoon on Twitter that Haley grinned when asked about the current rumors floating around that Wallace will be reporting “soon” and said, “I don\’t know anything factual about when he is returning.”
I guess it all depends on how much you can read into that grin that Kaboly reported.
Unfortunately we still do not know what the exact time frame of “soon” is, as the word has been thrown around by Steeler players ever since they arrived in Latrobe for training camp. One could speculate, and I emphasize speculate, that “soon” will be after the Steelers break camp on Friday. It makes no sense for Wallace to report right now with just three training camp practices remaining and there is no chance that he would play in the Sunday night preseason game against the Indianapolis Colts. Could he be on the sideline for the game though? Certainly, but we shall see.
The rumors of a Wallace return were once again ignited last week and stem from an interview that Alan Robinson of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review had with Tom Shaw, Wallace\’s new personal strength and condition coach, who told Robinson that Wallace could possibly be reporting “soon” after finishing up his training down at the Wide World of Sports facility down in Orlando, Florida. Since that report surfaced, ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter reported that a source told him that Wallace is expected to report to the team before the regular season begins. That\’s a broad time frame though and certainly not one I would regard as being “soon”. It very well could just be Schefter jumping on the report Robinson had, but we will never know for sure.
Once Wallace does report, if it indeed it is “soon”, and by “soon” I mean over the course of the next week, there is still plenty of time for contract negotiations to resume and the two sides reaching a long-term agreement prior to the start of the regular season. I have predicted this to ultimately be the end result to this ordeal for some time now.
In closing, we should have all of our answers to this ongoing Wallace saga “soon”, but I will leave it up to you readers to decide what time frame “soon” actually is.
