The Pittsburgh Steelers appreciated Troy Fautanu a lot that they handed on Zach Frazier within the first spherical of the draft, and so they love him. They felt so strongly about Fautanu that they even began him the second week of the season regardless of lacking an excessive amount of time on account of harm. However Ben Roethlisberger wonders in the event that they didn’t give him sufficient time to come back again earlier than getting him again onto the sector.
He introduced it up on his Footbahlin podcast whereas discussing Alex Highsmith’s groin harm aggravation. Roethlisberger praised Nick Herbig and talked about how a lot of a boon it was to have him. Coming off a two-sack recreation, the Steelers can belief Herbig to fill in. I’m unsure the Steelers felt the identical about their options to Troy Fautanu. However now they don’t have any options.
“That’s good as a result of then you might inform Alex, ‘Hey, be sure to’re prepared’. You don’t should rush him again”, Roethlisberger mentioned, speaking about Herbig. “I believe perhaps that’s what they tried to do with our rookie lineman [Troy Fautanu]. Now he’s gonna be out for some time. I believe they rushed [him]. I imply, I’m not a medical individual, however while you rush somebody…”.
Fautanu suffered a sprained MCL within the first quarter of the primary preseason recreation. He didn’t apply for the rest of the preseason, lastly ramping up main into the common season. Although the Steelers gave him a helmet for the season opener, he didn’t play.
They plugged Fautanu into the beginning lineup every week later, and he performed the entire recreation. It was solely throughout the next week of apply that he suffered a setback. The rookie failed to complete Friday’s apply, lacking Sunday’s recreation. Yesterday, Ian Rapoport reported that he’s set for surgical procedure to restore ligament harm and “basically” a dislocated kneecap.
As of this writing, we have no idea if Troy Fautanu injured the identical knee or the other knee. Nevertheless, we do know that one harm might result in one other whereas overcompensating for the unique harm. Till we all know which knee he injured, although, it’s exhausting to say very a lot.
Ben Roethlisberger could be talking out of flip, or no less than out of ignorance—and I suppose he’s. He acknowledges he’s not a “medical individual” and doesn’t appear to know something that we don’t know. Maybe he acquired his data from our article, for all we all know.
However one factor we all know is that the Steelers aren’t going to say they rushed Fautanu again, resulting in his subsequent harm. Once more, we don’t know if that is an aggravation of his earlier harm or one thing new fully. However it’s not unreasonable to conjecture that this might fall below that class.
Whereas Troy Fautanu performed a whole quarter of soccer after struggling his unique harm, it’s fully potential that he didn’t take sufficient time to heal correctly in a manner that might forestall an aggravation or forestall him from overcompensating and resulting in a brand new harm. It’s fully potential, too, that one had nothing to do with the opposite, and that it’s merely unhealthy luck.