Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin held his first official press conference of the 2019 regular season on Tuesday and in his opening remarks he didn’t provide very much clarity in regard to the overall health of the team ahead of the Sunday night opener against the New England Patriots.
“We had a number of guys that were battling short-term injuries as the preseason came to a close, some of which we left in Pittsburgh as a precaution,” Tomlin said. “We’ll get some of those guys back into the fold on Wednesday and evaluate their level of participation and practice and thus their level of availability. I don’t have a lot of details about some of those guys as I stand here right now.”
One player that we do know is currently battling through an injury is starting safety Sean Davis, who suffered an ankle injury during the team’s third preseason game. Davis reportedly didn’t practice on Monday and Tomlin was asked on Tuesday if he thinks the team’s former second-round draft pick out of Maryland will be able play Sunday night against the Patriots.
“I don’t know, we’ll see in terms of Sean Davis’s availability,” Tomlin said. “I like what I’ve seen from Kam Kelly, he’s had a good preseason and have got great deal of confidence in him.”
Kameron Kelly reportedly took the Monday first-team snaps at free safety in place of the injured Davis. We won’t learn more about Davis and his injury status until the team releases their first injury report of Week 1 at the conclusion of Wednesdays practice.
In addition to Davis likely being on the Wednesday team injury report, we could see outside linebackers Anthony Chickillo and Olasunkanmi Adeniyi on there as well. Adeniyi, however, did reportedly practice n some capacity on Monday. Tight end Xavier Grimble was reportedly dealing with an unspecified injury late in the preseason as well so we’ll have to wait and see if he shows up on the Wednesday report. The same goes for rookie cornerback Justin Layne, who suffered an unspecified injury in the first half of the team’s preseason finale.
