The Pittsburgh Steelers have two injuries to address at the start of training camp. As announced by Mike Tomlin during his first press conference of training camp, FS Minkah Fitzpatrick will start the year on the NFI, Non-Football Injury List, due to a wrist injury. NT Tyson Alualu will begin the year on PUP due to knee swelling.
“Minkah will be placed on NFI,” he said. “He sustained a wrist injury on vacation. I think he fell off a bike. It’ll create some short term discomfort, but I don’t expect it to be an issue in the overall trajectory of his development and his place within this group and stadium availability and things of that nature. It’s just going create some discomfort for him at the early stages of this. Tyson Alualu has been placed on PUP. He has a knee that’s been swelling on him a little bit, probably from overtraining. Similar discussion as Minkah. We don’t expect it to be significant from a long term perspective, but it will create some discomfort here at the early stages. We’ll monitor those guys. There’s some other guys with minor things that will manage from a rep standpoint, but it won’t affect their designation in terms of participation.”
As Tomlin indicated, he believes both players aren’t dealing with long-term injuries. But Alualu’s situation seems more concerning given his age and the season-ending ankle injury he suffered in Week 2 last year. Alualu is looking to provide quality reps in the middle of the Steelers’ defense, something they lacked without him a year ago, leading the Steelers to have the 32nd-ranked run defense. Alualu will be on Active/PUP, meaning he’s able to come off it at any point during training camp.
Larry Ogunjobi will not begin the year on PUP though Mike Tomlin says the team will take it slower with him at the start of the summer. He’s coming off a foot injury suffered in the 2021 postseason that caused a long-term deal with Chicago to fall through after he failed his physical.
“He’s coming off surgery,” Tomlin said. “We exercise precaution because he’s new here and new to us. And so as we get to know him, we’re gonna proceed with caution so we get a better understanding of how his body works so that we take no steps backwards as we proceed. So I wouldn’t read too much into his lack of participation.”
UPDATE (5:35 PM): The moves are now official.
