Wil the Pittsburgh Steelers get defensive end Stephon Tuitt back for the team’s Week 4 road game against the Green Bay Packers? It’s hard to say for sure, especially on the heels of Tuitt reportedly needing to undergo some sort of procedure on one of his knees fairly recently. In case you missed it, our very own Dr. Melanie Friedlander recently dedicated a post to the news that Tuitt needed some knee work done. On Wednesday, Steelers defensive tackle Tyson Alualu met the media after practice and late in his interview he was asked if he has any sort of expectation for when Tuitt will be able to return to action.
“I don’t know,” Alualu said. “I know I see him in there every day working and doing his rehab. But I know it’ll be soon, and I know he’ll come back ready and ready to prove and do the same thing he was doing last year. And then I think he’ll even do better.”
Well, that’s encouraging overall, right?
With Tuitt starting the regular season on the Steelers’ Reserve/Injured list, he won’t be able to play until Week 4 at the earliest as he must miss the first three games. It will be interesting to see if Tuitt needs more than a week or two of practice before playing in a game, however. Once Tuitt does resume practice, the Steelers will have 21 days to activate him to the 53-man roster.
Tuitt has missed a lot of practice time this offseason and that’s understandable due to him and his family enduring the tragic loss of his younger brother early in the summer. Tuitt’s knee issue also explains why he wasn’t ready for the start of the regular season.
Once Tuitt is deemed ready to resume playing, I think he can return to being the player he was in 2020, which was a dominant one. That said, I’m not so sure just yet that we are guaranteed to see Tuitt play in Week 4 against the Packers. Time will tell, obviously. In the meantime, however, the Steelers will continue to have Alualu and defensive end Chris Wormley fill in for Tuitt. Both played fine against the Buffalo Bills in Week 1, along with the rest of the Steelers defense.
