Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has vowed to return to the field, and to that end, the two-time Super Bowl champ will undergo his season-ending elbow surgery this week, as Adam Schefter of ESPN.com reports.
Luckily for Roethlisberger, he will not require Tommy John surgery, so Schefter’s sources say there is no concern about the signal-caller’s availability for 2020. “There is complete optimism that he will be ready to roll next season,” one source said. “No one is concerned that next year is going to be a problem.”
Although Schefter says the exact nature of Roethlisberger’s elbow injury remains unclear, Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports writes that the procedure will repair a muscle tear and does not involve any ligaments or tendons (which is in keeping with the report that TJ surgery is not required). JLC adds Big Ben’s recovery plan will include throwing in the spring.
In the meantime, Pittsburgh is not throwing in the towel on the 2019 campaign, as evidenced by the team’s trade for Minkah Fitzpatrick earlier this week. The club has expressed full confidence in second-year QB Mason Rudolph, and both La Canfora (in a separate piece) and Schefter remind us that the Steelers were so enamored with Rudolph — and so convinced that the division-rival Bengals were locked in on him — that they leapfrogged Cincinnati in the third round of the 2018 draft to select him. At the time, then-Bengals HC Marvin Lewis said he felt as though the Steelers had bugged the Bengals’ war room.
In fact, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweets that the Steelers had a first-round grade on Rudolph, which is why they believe they can remain competitive this season.
Ben saw Mr. Big Chest’s Twitter meltdown and immediately floated this story to Schefter in order to tweak Big Chest even more.
The problem with Big Ben’s on field performance,
Isn’t his elbow.
The problem is in his heart,
and in his head.
It sounds like that is where your problem lies, also?
Yikes. Cardiac disease alone is scary enough. Kudos to your diagnosis!! I hope they both recover.
Great news!
Devastating news for the Pittsburg Steelers.
I can’t tell of this is good or bad news for PIT fans…