We are still waiting to hear whether Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Russell Wilson will play in their next preseason game. We should hear from head coach Mike Tomlin shortly, who will likely announce his decision at that time. While he still doesn’t know if he is going to play, though, Wilson is fearlessly ready for the workload.
Wilson injured his calf during the Steelers’ conditioning test, and he is technically still not “all the way back”. While he is participating significantly more in practice, he has yet to take on the whole of true first-string reps. He insists this is the team being extremely cautious, however, which he doesn’t plan to be in any heightened way once he is back inside a stadium.
“I don’t play with fear. I never have. You play smart, just like a normal game, you know?”, Russell Wilson told reporters yesterday during the Steelers final open training camp practice, via the team’s website. “You’ve got to know when to get down. You’ve got to know when to slide, get out of bounds, all those things”.
“But this is my 13th year. I know how to avoid certain things, certain hits and all that”, Wilson added. “You’ve got to be smart out there, but also too, you don’t play scared. I don’t strap on the pads and just get ready to go and play fearful. Anybody who knows me knows I don’t think that way, so I’ll be ready to rock and roll if that’s the case”.
Entering this 13th year, Russell Wilson signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers this offseason after the Denver Broncos released him. A former Super Bowl champion with 115 career wins, he is among the most experienced players in the NFL. In terms of starting quarterbacks, only Aaron Rodgers and Matthew Stafford have him beat.
With that experience comes a decline in physical health, though, and Russell Wilson is 35 years old now. It’s impossible to say whether that contributed to his calf injury, which occurred during a new-to-the-Steelers and somewhat unorthodox conditioning test.
Either way, the Steelers have exercised more than an abundance of caution with Wilson’s calf—one hopes. The hope is that he would have been able to practice more extensively for some time by now, and that he should be fully ready for anything moving forward.
Time will tell on that front, and we shouldn’t have to wait long. At least Tomlin should tell us shortly whether he plans to play Russell Wilson on Saturday or not. It would mark the Steelers debut for the veteran quarterback, which fans have anticipated for the past five months. And he has anticipated it as well.
