Due to his history of concussions, there’s been a lot of talk about Pittsburgh Steelers tight end Ladarius Green as to whether or not the team will keep him moving forward. However, during his weekly chat session on Tuesday, Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that he believes Green isn’t going anywhere for the time being.
“The decision, I believe, has been made. He is on their roster and will remain there,” Bouchette wrote when asked about the future of Green with the Steelers. “No reason for them not to bring him back. His health will determine what happens from there.”
A few weeks ago during his annual talk with the Pittsburgh media, Steelers team president Art Rooney II was viewed as being non-committal about Green’s future with the team. Rooney said at the time that Green has a “physical condition” that the team needs to evaluate.
One would think that the offseason medical evaluation of Green will likely be completed by the time the 2017 NFL Draft rolls around and if the tight end is ultimately deemed to not be a big medical risk moving forward, it could result in his position being bypassed in the first few rounds and potentially all of them. Unfortunately for us on the outside of the organization, we might not really get an idea of just how secure Green’s future is in Pittsburgh until after the draft takes place.
With the start of the annual NFL scouting combine now just right around the corner, we can look forward to Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert holding his annual session with the media while he’s in Indianapolis and you can provably count on him being asked about Green during that time. Will he be forthcoming about Green’s medical evaluations? We’ll see, but I doubt we’ll learn much of anything new.
The Steelers have already invested $6 million in Green and they’re on schedule to spend $5 million more in him in 2017 as that’s what he’s set to earn this year. The Steelers 2016 free agent prize signing produced as the team hoped he would when he finally got on the field last season but that was only for a span of six regular season games.
It makes sense for the Steelers to do nothing with Green between now and the start of training camp in order to see how he does during the offseason training activities. Personally, I’d think long and hard about spending a draft pick on a tight end who has similar abilities as Green just in case.
