As the Pittsburgh Steelers enter their bye week, the status for the return of their star linebacker James Harrison remains as cloudy as ever, writes Mike Bires.
Harrison was out of practice again on Wednesday, and the missing time from all of training camp and off-season workouts is mounting. Bires notes that Harrison's inability at this point to practice in two straight days. The 34-year-old hard-hitter practiced on Tuesday only, as he continues to recover from arthroscopic knee surgery that took place on Aug. 15.
The team will not practice the rest of this week, reports Bires, as Pittsburgh holds out hope that Harrison will be able to contribute when the team faces the Philadelphia Eagles on Oct. 7.
As Bires says in his article, Harrison's replacements aren't quite filling his shoes:
"Coach Mike Tomlin always likes to say "the standard is the standard" when a backup has to replace an injured starter. But that hasn't been the case at ROLB with [Chris] Carter. At least [Jason] Worilds has one of the Steelers' five sacks."
Bires also noted that if Harrison can't go against the Eagles, he predicts Worilds to start in place of Carter.