Steelers Get Promising Injury Updates, No Major Surgeries Coming

PITTSBURGH — T.J. Watt’s rehab is going well, and the Pittsburgh Steelers got a slew of solid injury news to end their season. After the 31-17 loss to the Buffalo Bills, Pittsburgh will turn toward helping mend many of the injuries the group suffered throughout the season.

Watt’s is at the top. He suffered a grade 2 MCL sprain against the Baltimore Ravens. While he missed their wild-card game against the Bills, Mike Tomlin stated that Watt would have likely been available if they had won and advanced to the divisional round.

“T.J.’s rehabilitation is going well,” Tomlin said. “He probably would have been available had we played this week.”

On the flip side of this, no significant surgeries are expected to come out of the season. Tomlin noted that there will be some scheduled cleanup procedures shortly, but nothing too major will sideline a player for months. Meanwhile, Joey Porter Jr. and Allen Robinson II remain in concussion protocol after the Bills game.

The other significant update the Steelers received was on Cole Holcomb. Holcomb has a target date to be ready for training camp and maybe even get some work in during OTAs, but that will come down to how quickly he can progress. At this stage, Tomlin is unsure exactly how far Holcomh is to achieving those goals.

Cam Heyward, Isaac Seumalo, and Najee Harris were injured for a lot of the season. Those injuries hampered them from a practice availability standpoint all year and could be some of the injuries Tomlin refers to above.

Someone like Watt is not expected to need surgery on his injury. Other questions remain lingering, like Keanu Neal, Trenton Thompson, and others who stayed on injured reserve through the end of the season. But given Tomlin’s optimistic update, he feels confident many players will not have their injuries linger on throughout the offseason and into next season.