The Pittsburgh Steelers are now into the regular season, following the most unique offseason in the NFL since at least World War II. While it didn’t involve a player lockout, teams still did not have physical access to their players, though they were at least able to meet with them virtually.
Even training camp looked much different from the norm, and a big part of that was the fact that there will be no games along the way to prepare for. Their first football game of the year was to be the opener against the New York Giants.
As the season progresses, however, there will be a number of questions that arise on a daily basis, and we will do our best to try to raise attention to them as they come along, in an effort to both point them out and to create discussion
Questions like, how will the players who are in new positions this year going to perform? Will the rookies be able to contribute significantly? How will Ben Roethlisberger look—and the other quarterbacks as well? Now, we even have questions about whether or not players will be in quarantine.
These are the sorts of questions among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked, though there is rarely a concrete answer, as I’ve learned in my years of doing this.
Question: Will either Cameron Heyward or Tyson Alualu miss time due to their injuries, and if so, how much?
Monday morning presents a mixture of good news and bad news, but globally, is skews pretty heavily to the good. The Steelers wake up 7-0 today, literally for just the second time in team history, and they have a two-game lead in the division race without the possibility of losing the head-to-head tiebreaker anymore.
What’s more, while the Kansas City Chiefs predictably embarrassed the New York Jets and advanced to 6-1, the Tennessee Titans lost, and so now have two losses. The Steelers and the Chiefs are now the only teams in the AFC with fewer than two losses, with the Buffalo Bills (whom Pittsburgh will still play) and the Indianapolis Colts (whom they will also play) in the two-loss club with the Ravens and Titans as well.
On top of that, the Steelers’ schedule gets easier from here, with the Dallas Cowboys, the Cincinnati Bengals (at home), and the Jacksonville Jaguars the next three on the table. They do still have four games remaining against teams with current winning records.
But how healthy will they be, at least for the next game? Both Cameron Heyward and Tyson Alualu left yesterday’s contest with injuries. While according to Gerry Dulac it sounds as though Heyward escaped serious injury, and Alualu was seen still in his uniform around sideline huddles, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t miss any time. considering what the run defense looked like without Alualu, I’d like to see him get back as soon as possible.
