We’re unlikely to find out whether or not injured Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger will play Sunday in the teams divisional round road playoff game against the Denver Broncos until 90 minutes before the game kicks off. However, after failing to practice on Wednesday, it’s starting to sound like Roethlisberger won’t do much of anything on Thursday as well.
According to Chris Bradford of the Beaver County Times on Twitter, Roethlisberger was walking around the Steelers locker room Thursday morning with his injured right shoulder heavily wrapped. While that’s not overly surprising considering the nature of the shoulder injury that he suffered Saturday night in the win over the Cincinatti Bengals, it’s probably a good sign that he won’t throw later during practice.
Wednesday evening, it was reported that the early word is that Roethlisberger is 50-50 to play Sunday against the Broncos and that too is not overly surprising. Right now, rest is probably the best thing that will help Roethlisberger be able to play on Sunday, which will be more than a week since he suffered the injury when he was sacked by Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict late in the third quarter.
The Steelers Thursday injury report will be released around 3:30 p.m. EST so we’ll have to wait until then to find out whether or not he was able to do much of anything during practice. Regardless, expect backup Landry Jones to receive most of the first-team practice reps on Thursday as he’ll be the one to play against the Broncos should Roethlisberger ultimately sit the game out.
UPDATE: Roethlisberger has now said he won’t be throwing any during Thursday’s practice.
