The Steelers put Russell Wilson through a “battery of movements” this week to assess where he is in his return from a calf injury he aggravated last Thursday. But while the quarterback said he’s getting “closer and closer” he does not sound confident about playing this week.
It’s no surprise as Wilson has not had a full practice since last Wednesday, the day before he aggravated his calf injury.
“I’m just trying to be smart,” Wilson said Thursday, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN. “Got to do a lot of work today on the field and everything else, throwing and all that, so just trying to be smart.”
Justin Fields started the season-opening win over the Falcons and appears poised to start again this week against the Broncos, Wilson’s former team.
Though Wilson wants and hopes to play, he said he is going to deliberate in his return and not come back until he’s 100 percent. The team’s medical staff will help him determine when the right time is to practice and play.
“Anybody who knows me, I always want to go and play and that’s how I get my mind ready, my body ready for that, to play,” Wilson said. “At the end of the day, I believe you got to play dinged-up sometimes. I think Coach, he’s also and the trainers just want to be smart, too, as well just because it’s early in the season. I think that if this is the last game of the season kind of thing or one of those kinds of games, we’re definitely going.
“I think right now I want to go, but we also, too, want to be smart, too, as well.”
Wilson originally injured his calf pushing a sled during the team’s conditioning test the day before training camp. He missed 10 practices while rehabbing.
Wilson played six series in the preseason, with the injury appearing to be behind him. But Wilson experienced tightness in last Thursday’s practice. He warmed up before the Falcons game, but it wasn’t good enough to play.
“I think when it happened in training camp, I was disappointed,” Wilson said. “I knew it was pretty strong, pretty good calf injury, and so that was disappointing. But we kept our head up, we worked our butts off every day in the training room. . . . We spent a lot of time just to kind of get ready, and so when I tweaked it again it was like, ‘OK, yeah, we got to be smart here and not crazy push it too bad. So, I think that was the frustrating part. Obviously, I want to be to be out there in between the white lines with our teammates.”
