Even though Pittsburgh Steelers second-year linebacker Ryan Shazier did miss four games earlier in the season due to a shoulder injury, the former first round draft pick hasn’t missed any games since even though he’s been on the team’s injury report quite a bit.
While Shazier was knocked out the team’s Week 12 game with a concussion in the first half of play, he managed to battle back from that Sunday night in order to start against the Indianapolis Colts.
While Shazier did start the Colts game, he didn’t play every defensive snap as Vince Williams also saw playing time. On Tuesday, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin was asked about Shazier not playing every snap against the Colts and if that decision had anything to do with him coming off of a concussion.
“That was last week’s rotation,” Tomlin said Tuesday from the Rooney Sports Complex. “We’re comfortable with what Vince is capable of doing, just like we’re comfortable with what Sean Spence is capable of doing. We’ll determine the rotation this week based on this week’s challenges and availability.”
In the end, Williams only played 13 defensive snaps against the Colts and in fact, he only played 3 snaps in the second half as Shazier played the rest.
Being as Sean Spence missed the Sunday night game with a hamstring injury, it’s hard to guess as to how much he could’ve possibly cut into Shazier’s snaps. Even so, the team has been comfortable playing all three players alongside Lawrence Timmons for the entire season so we’re probably not going to see Shazier play an entire game for the remainder of the season. The Steelers will play the Cincinnati Bengals this coming Sunday and Shazier will likely get the bulk of the snaps in that game as well.
