Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier is finishing out his second season on the team’s Reserve/PUP list and while his NFL future as a player is still currently up in the air, it appears as though the former first-round draft pick is a candidate to be on the 29th season of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, which won’t premiere until fall 2020, according to Elizabeth Wagmeister of Variety.
Rob Mills, ABC Entertainment’s senior VP of alternative series, specials and late-night programming, confirmed to Variety that Shazier could potentially be a target to be on the famous television dancing show.
“Two years ago, he [Shazier] was hit on a Monday Night Football game and doctors feared he was paralyzed, and he has learned to walk again. Those are those great stories that are really what ‘Dancing With the Stars’ is all about — here’s somebody who has overcome something, and when you do that, you dance,” Mills reportedly said of Shazier. “He would be great.”
Shazier suffered a severe spinal injury in a December 2017 Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Last spring, and roughly 18 months after suffering his injury, Shazier was able to dance with his wife at their wedding. That video went viral.
If Shazier is unable to resume playing football next season, perhaps we will see him doing more dancing on television.
Former Steelers Hines Ward and Antonio Brown have both already appeared on DWTS with the former being crowned champion of Season 12.
