Last week we seemed to get some favorable news on Pittsburgh Steelers ILB Cole Holcomb, who is still attempting to rehab the serious knee injury that he sustained last season. That favorable news was essentially Holcomb being shown training at Bommarito Performance Systems while wearing a sleeve on his left leg up to his knee. On Sunday at the NFL’s annual meetings in Orlando, Florida, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin was asked about Holcomb’s ongoing rehab.
According to Mike DeFabo of The Athletic, Tomlin said on Sunday that Holcomb had a “favorable” checkup with doctors a few weeks back. Even so, Tomlin reportedly refused to speculate on any sort of return date for the inside linebacker.
“I don’t have any details from a calendar perspective of levels of availability,” Tomlin said, according to DeFabo’s tweet.
Holcomb’s 2023 season-ending knee injury happened on November 2nd, during the Steelers’ Week Nine game against the Tennessee Titans. He presumably underwent surgery not too long after suffering that injury. In short, it’s probably been around four months since his surgery took place. That might mean he has at least four to five months to go before he can get back on a football field again and that’s probably super optimistic thinking.
Tomlin also previously discussed Holcomb during his end-of-season press conference.
“He has a target date in terms of readiness there, but it’s still probably early,” Tomlin said during that middle of January press conference. “I’ll have a more definitive posture on that probably when we get closer to OTAs, and we start speculating about some of those things then.”
Prior to Holcomb sustaining his Week Nine injury he was having a nice first season with the Steelers on the heels of him signing a three-year, $18 million deal as an unrestricted free agent last March. At that time, Holcomb had registered 54 tackles, two forced fumbles, one fumble recovery, two passes defensed and four tackles for loss, playing 447 snaps on the season. He graded out at a 64.2 overall from Pro Football Focus, including a 72.2 in run defense and a 55.2 in coverage.
While Holcomb will hopefully be ready for Week One on the 2024 regular season, the Steelers made sure to make a significant addition to their inside linebacker room again this offseason. That significant addition was none other than former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Patrick Queen, who signed a three-year, $41 million contract with the Steelers not long after the start of the new league year. Queen is now expected to be the Steelers new every-down inside linebacker moving into 2024.
In addition to Queen and Holcomb, the Steelers also still have linebackers Elandon Roberts and Mark Robinson under contract. Roberts registered significant playing time last season, his first in Pittsburgh.
The Steelers have shown some interest in a few draft eligible inside linebackers so far this spring so there’s a chance they address the position at some point during the 2024 NFL Draft. Steelers inside linebackers coach Aaron Curry has been spotted at a few pro days so far this offseason.
As for Holcomb, we’ll now wait and see how his rehab goes from this point on. It’s kind of doubtful, however, that he’ll be a full participant for the team’s OTA sessions once they get underway in May, which is roughly two months from now.
