Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger underwent arthroscopic surgery Monday morning to clean up the meniscus in his left knee that he damaged in Sunday’s loss to the Miami Dolphins and while head coach Mike Tomlin refused to put a timetable on when he might return when he held his weekly press conference on Tuesday, it appears though team president Art Rooney II already has one in mind.
According to Jarrett Bell of USA Today, Rooney II said Roethlisberger’s projected recovery time is “two or three weeks.”
Based on that, Roethlisberger will hopefully be back for the Steelers post-bye game against the Baltimore Ravens.
Rooney’s projection matches the one Melanie Friedlander gave in her Tuesday breakdown of Roethlisberger’s minor surgery. If you haven’t read that yet, I highly suggest that you do.
“Keeping my fingers crossed,” Rooney said, according to Bell. “They’re always different cases.”
Roethlisberger injured his left knee while attempting to avoid a sack in the second quarter of the game against the Dolphins. While he did leave the game in order to go to the locker room to have his knee examined by the team’s doctors, he was able to return and play the entire second half.
On Tuesday, Tomlin was asked what led to his decision to let Roethlisberger return and play in the second half.
“He got medical clearance to do so and he was willing to do it,” said Tomlin. “So really, there wasn’t a lot of discussion. They analyzed him and evaluated him at the latter point of the second quarter while we were still on the field so that evaluation was pretty much complete by the time we got into the locker room. So there wasn’t a lot of discussion regarding that. He went back out after halftime, moved around a little bit, felt good enough to go, so we went forward.”
During the second half, Roethlisberger completed just 14 of his 25 pass attempts for 148 yards with a touchdown and an interception.
With Roethlisberger already ruled out for Sunday’s home game against the New England Patriots, backup Landry Jones is now set to make his third career start in his absence.
