Pittsburgh Steelers DL Cam Heyward had a rough 2023. He played in 11 games, the lowest total since he played in seven games in 2016. He dealt with multiple injuries throughout the season that robbed him of playing time and effectiveness. Then late in February, Heyward underwent surgery reportedly to repair a groin and core muscle injury.
On Wednesday’s episode of Not Just Football, Heyward took time to dive fully into his injury issues during the season. There was a lot, and he gave listeners a bit of an anatomy lesson along the way.
“So I tore my pectineus early in training camp,” Heyward said. “Thought it would heal and I was resting more than usual. Then first week of the season, I go to make a diving tackle against the quarterback. Ended up my legs spread, and my right adductor ended up going because I didn’t have the pectineus going as well. Dealt with that by getting surgery and coming back Week 8, Week 9. Then the surgery, then coming back from it, just couldn’t explode like I wanted to. It looked like I was running with a board between my legs half the time. It was wild.”
If you’re like me and don’t have a medical degree or forgot a lot of what you learned in Anatomy & Physiology, there’s a lot to unpack here. The pectineus is a muscle that connects the pubic bone to the femur at the upper thigh. It helps with the movement of the hip joint. So having that muscle already weakened and not fully healed puts more strain on the other three muscles at the thigh, including the adductor Heyward mentioned.
Unfortunately for Heyward, that wasn’t the end of the injury problems. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had surgery after the season. Unsurprisingly, the issues later in the season were in response to the pectineus and adductor problems at the start.
“I started to overcompensate with the left a lot more trying to make up for it,” Heyward said. “What I did in the long run was I tore my abdomen and so I had to get that retied back to my pubic bone…Got that surgery just now. And there were some other things I had to take care of. If we wanna talk about that, I got my knee scoped, so there was a whole bunch of stuff going on.”
Now that Heyward has successfully had that final surgery and his knee scoped, it appears that he is healthy and probably feeling better than he did at really any point of the 2023 season. That should mean he will be ready to go for training camp and be back to his usual dominant self.
You can watch the entire episode of Not Just Football below:
