The journey toward the 2017 season is now in full swing with the Pittsburgh Steelers having reported to Latrobe for their annual training camp at Saint Vincent College, where they have held their camps for over half a century now.
This is surely the time more than any other in which we find ourselves full of questions that we are looking to get answered, and this also tends to be the best time to get answers to those questions that have been building up over the course of time since the 2016 season ended.
You can rest assured that we have the questions, and we will be monitoring the developments in the training camp and the preseason as they develop, and beyond, looking for the answers as we look to evaluate the makeup of the Steelers as they try to navigate their way back to the Super Bowl, after reaching the AFC Championship game last season for the first time in more than half a decade.
Question: How big a setback did Senquez Golson suffer leaving yesterday’s practice?
As we recapped for you yesterday, the Steelers’ third-year cornerback who has yet to be healthy for a game, Senquez Golson, left the team’s first padded practice of training camp, riding out on a cart after pulling up a bit and apparently grasping his hamstring.
This is as far as Golson has gotten into a season up to this point in his career. During his rookie season in 2015, the former second-round draft pick dealt with a lingering labrum injury that he aggravated in advance of training camp. He started on the Reserve Physically Unable to Perform List and never came off, ultimately having season-ending shoulder surgery.
Last season, he suffered a Lisfranc foot injury during the team’s first padded practice. The player and team held out hope that he would ultimately be able to play this season, and they left him on the 53-man roster for a while, but ultimately moved him to injured reserve.
After practice, Head Coach Mike Tomlin did not seem overly concerned with any of the myriad injuries suffered by players yesterday, although the shoulder injury that James Conner suffered could be slightly more significant.
Still, if Golson did suffer a hamstring injury, it would be unlikely that he would have a good understanding about the degree of severity, and so it would be difficult to predict how much time that he might miss.
The fact of the matter is that the third-year cornerback is in a position in which he cannot afford to miss much time watching practice from the sidelines. The Steelers brought in a cornerback in free agency and drafted two more, so there is no roster spot waiting for him by default. He has to earn it on the practice field an in the preseason, something he has not had the opportunity to do to date.
