The Pittsburgh Steelers Week 12 game will be on the road against the Denver Broncos and on Tuesday head coach Mike Tomlin updated the overall health of his team ahead of Wednesday’s practice.
“We’ll see how Marcus Gilbert is and we’ll let his availability be our guide,” Tomlin said during his Tuesday press conference. “I don’t know that he’ll work tomorrow, but again, we’ll see how it feels in the morning. Same can be said for Stephon Tuitt.
“We had a couple injuries in-game that should slow some guys at the early portions of the week, we’ll see how it goes. [Anthony] Chickillo, I think you saw him on the ground at the end of a special teams play at the end with an ankle. I know he’s been working hard, we’ll see what the early portion of the week looks like for him. And Matt Feiler has a pec that he’s been working on downstairs that didn’t limit him in any of his snaps in-game, but we want to watch him as we get into the front of the week here and see what it does to his availability at the front part of the week.”
Tackle Marcus Gilbert (knee) and defensive end Stephon Tuitt (elbow) were both inactive for the Steelers Sunday Week 11 road game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. While it was the first game this season that Tuitt has missed, it was the fourth consecutive one that Gilbert has missed and fifth this season. Because of the amount of consecutive games that Gilbert’s now missed, Tomlin was asked Tuesday if the team’s starting right tackle had any sort of a setback with his injured knee.
“I wouldn’t describe it as a setback,” Tomlin said. “It’s probably not healing as fast as he or we would like, but that’s life. I wouldn’t describe it as a setback, no.”
As for outside linebacker Anthony Chickillo and his ankle injury, you could indeed see him go down injured during the final punt in Sunday’s game against the Jaguars. With the Steelers only carrying three true outside linebackers on their 53-man roster this so far this season they might need to add one come Saturday evening.
The candidates to be added to the 53-man roster should Chickillo be unable to play Sunday against the Broncos would be Farrington Huguenin, Keion Adams and Olasunkanmi Adeniyi. Huguenin and Adams have both been on the Steelers practice squad all season while Adeniyi has been on the team’s Reserve/Injured list with a hamstring injury. Adeniyi, however, looks like might resume practicing again on Wednesday.
“We’ll see,” Tomlin said on Adeniyi. “You know, we make those decisions – I think a day like today’s the day we kind of have those discussions. I hadn’t had them in totality yet. I’m sure I will, but he looked pretty good the latter part of last week. It might be time for that.”
