Former Pittsburgh Steelers OT Zach Banner was a starter going into the 2020 season, but a torn ACL in Week 1 against the New York Giants ended his season. While Banner played seven games in the 2021 season, he hasn’t played in the NFL since, and on The Zach Banner Podcast, he described just how devastating the ACL injury was to him.
“It’s my first time being the starting right tackle. And I tear my knee in the fourth quarter. Devastated,” he said. “The team signs me back for two years, 2021 comes up, I’m still not ready, my knee’s swollen, 17 regular-season weeks of whether I’m on IR or I’m not active, or I’m active and not playing on the weekend, not available. All that trauma built up and then released in March 2022.”
Banner said it was especially tough getting released because he loved Pittsburgh and playing for the Steelers.
“My spirit’s broken. Absolutely loved that city. Absolutely loved what we were doing there. My relationship with Mike Tomlin and everybody in Pittsburgh and the Rooney family, Even now, going through these last couple years of free agency, I will always love the city of Pittsburgh.”
Banner said that after the injury, he went from being a happy “energizer bunny” to someone who was sapped of his joy.
“I just remember just going from being a team guy and being the happy dude all the time, yeah I went through stuff but being that energizer bunny we talked about, to being completely deflated and completely broken, to almost like a victim for the first time.”
Banner said through it all, he felt a “warm, caring hand” from the city of Pittsburgh and his Steelers teammates.
It was a devastating injury, and while Banner said he’s fully healthy now, it’s going to be hard to make an NFL comeback after spending the last three seasons away from the game. He did have a workout with the New York Jets in 2023, but it didn’t lead to a signing.
Injuries are a part of football, but Banner’s experience shows that the emotional toll of injuries can be just as serious as the physical toll. He was an ascending player who seemed to have a future in Pittsburgh, and it all basically ended in the fourth quarter of Week 1 in 2020.
It’s hard not to feel for Banner, who seemed to truly love being a member of the Steelers and playing for and representing the city of Pittsburgh. It was a long road for him to get to being a contributor for the Steelers, a fourth-round pick by the Indianapolis Colts in the 2017 NFL Draft who was released by the team before the season. He played eight games with the Browns in 2017 as a backup, logging just five offensive snaps and 18 special teams snaps, and then signed with the Steelers ahead of the 2018 season.
He then went on to play 14 games and 216 offensive snaps in 2019, and won the starting job ahead of 2020 before the injury took it all away. With Banner injured, Chukwuma Okorafor stepped into the starting lineup and played well enough to keep the starting right tackle job in 2021, Banner never got healthy enough to challenge for it back ahead of being released.
It’s an all-too-familiar story for many NFL players, a promising career cut short due to injury, and it’s certainly tough to hear the mental and physical impact that it had on Zach Banner, but it’s good to see him healthy and seemingly do well now.
