Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin updated the injury status of safety Troy Polamalu, linebacker James Harrison and running back Rashard Mendenhall during his Tuesday press conference and said that he was optimistic that all there players would be able to play Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Following his presser Tomlin had his weekly appearance on SiriusXM NFL Radio to further talk about the bye week and the status of all three of the aforementioned injured players heading into the game.
“Troy and James worked some last week, late last week, and had a good day yesterday and really we feel good about their positioning as we get into the week,” Tomlin told the show initially.
When asked to give a status update of each player one-by-one, Tomlin did not bite. “All three worked yesterday with no limitations and completed full work and we anticipate those guys moving forward toward the weekend,” said Tomlin.
Tomlin was then asked how much concern he has in regard to them all missing playing time as it relates to when to cut them loose to return to action and how many snaps they can play in a game upon their return.
“I think it\’s different per guy,” said Tomlin. “I think that their level of conditioning and the positions that play have a lot to do with it. Their ability to play at a high level on a limited number of reps, because obviously injury has limited reps for these guys. Really that\’s how we\’re going to approach it, really, on a case-by-case basis.”
“We\’ll develop that plan accordingly of course as we get into the latter part of the week,” added Tomlin. But this nothing new in terms of how we have dealt with these guys in the past, of course particularly when you are talking about Troy and James. They\’ve been in this situation before. We\’ve dealt with the situation with them before, so obviously we\’ll have less hesitation about going with those guys and letting them play as opposed to a younger guy like Rashard, who is of course coming off of a major knee injury. So we\’re going to play it all by ear, but just in a nutshell, we deal with it on a case-by-case basis with the understanding that each situation is different.”
