As one of many issues and conversation points taking place now that the Pittsburgh Steelers are in offseason mode, Mike Tomlin said the front office higher-ups are discussing how to keep the team healthier in 2025. Speaking to reporters during his year-end press conference Tuesday, Tomlin said health was an early discussion he and the team are having as they look toward the future.
“Those type of discussions are going on on a lot of levels. How can we keep our team healthier was a discussion that happened yesterday, for example,” Tomlin said via the team’s YouTube channel. “We experienced a rash of soft tissue injuries this year that was impactful.”
The Steelers dealt with injuries throughout the season. In the front half of the year, their offensive line was a revolving door of players. Before the regular season began, OG Isaac Seumalo went down with a pec injury that cost him the first four games of the year. Rookie OT Troy Fautanu was injured ahead of Week 3 in a freak practice moment, dislocating his kneecap and knocking him out for the season. Right guard James Daniels tore his Achilles in Week 4 and went down for the season while rookie C Zach Frazier missed time with an ankle sprain, keeping him out through the Steelers’ bye. It wasn’t until the team returned from their week off that the group got healthy, though rookie RG Mason McCormick missed the playoff game with a broken left hand.
WR George Pickens went down with a hamstring injury that caused him to miss three games, hampering the offense and kicking off its losing streak. Of course, QB Russell Wilson started the year on the wrong foot, injured while pushing a sled in a training camp conditioning test and aggravating the injury right before Week 1, missing the first six games.
Defensively, the team was hit by injuries down the stretch. DL Larry Ogunjobi, SS DeShon Elliott, CB Joey Porter Jr., and CB Donte Jackson all missed time during the Steelers’ five-game losing streak, though all returned for the playoff loss that saw the defense get outclassed and outmuscled by the Baltimore Ravens’ offense. T.J. Watt didn’t miss a game but battled a thumb and ankle injuries while a flu bug broke out in the locker room late in the year, afflicting the likes of DL Cam Heyward and LB Patrick Queen.
Pittsburgh overhauled its strength and conditioning staff heading into the year, hiring Boston College’s Phil Matusz as the head strength and conditioning coach. It’s difficult to pinpoint if anything he and his crew did or could do better going forward. Some injuries are freak and unavoidable and happen to any team over the course of a long season. But the best teams are often the healthiest teams, and the Steelers had to deal with the attrition of injuries as they attempted to dig out of a hole they ultimately couldn’t climb out of.
