The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2021 season is underway, and they are hoping for a better outcome in comparison to last season. After starting out 11-0, they finished the year 1-4 in the regular season, and then lost in the Wildcard Round to the Cleveland Browns, ignited by a 0-28 first quarter.
They have lost a large number of key players in the offseason, like Maurkice Pouncey, Bud Dupree, Alejandro Villanueva, David DeCastro, Mike Hilton, and Steven Nelson, but they’ve also made significant additions as the months have gone on, notably Trai Turner, Melvin Ingram, Joe Schobert, and Ahkello Witherspoon. They also added Najee Harris, Pat Freiermuth, Kendrick Green, and Dan Moore Jr., all of whom are starting.
There isn’t much left to do but to play the games at this point. Even if they play them poorly. They still have a lot to figure out, though, such as what Matt Canada’s offense is going to look like in any given week, or how the new-look secondary and offensive line is going to play.
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. There is rarely a concrete answer, but this is your venue for exploring the topics we present through all their uncertainty.
Question: How much time will wide receiver Chase Claypool miss?
It took about a day and a half for the news to come out, but according to reports, wide receiver Chase Claypool’s injury suffered in the second half of Monday night’s game appears to be one that will cause him to miss some time, referred to as a toe injury.
Relayed by Ian Rapoport, he said that it is not season-ending, though I don’t think anybody on the outside had that fear, so the fact that that was the ‘good news’ isn’t really good. Tests ultimately show a week-to-week injury, which obviously suggests he’s probably not going to play this week.
But how much time will he miss? The Steelers host the Detroit Lions this week, but then they play the Los Angeles Chargers on the road before heading back to Ohio for a rematch against the Cincinnati Bengals, who have beaten them twice in a row for the first time in…a number of years.
Already absent JuJu Smith-Schuster for the rest of the year, it would obviously be a major blow to be without Claypool for a stretch of games as well. They would place an even greater burden on Diontae Johnson, though it would open even more playing time for James Washington.
With Eric Ebron on the mend, I would imagine that the tight end position between himself, Pat Freiermuth, and Zach Gentry would also be quite in demand for whatever stretch of time Claypool might miss—hopefully no more than a week, but hope has no impact on fact. Claypool has missed one game this year, and this is not the first time he has been banged up.
