Being a Steeler can be hazardous
— -- Exactly 19 days ago, the Pittsburgh Steelers thought so much of linebacker James Harrison's diminished skills that they actually organized a formal retirement ceremony to celebrate the fact that he could no longer play the game of football at a high level.
On Tuesday, the Steelers signed Harrison, 36, the former NFL Defensive Player of the Year, to their active roster.
What happened in those 19 days? It's simple. The same thing that has plagued Pittsburgh for the past three seasons.
Injuries. Lots and lots of injuries.
A whopping 25 players have landed on Pittsburgh's IR in the past 35 games by my count (and with the help of Pro-Football-Reference.com's NFL injury encyclopedia). Elbows. Forearms. Groins. Feet. And knees. Lots and lots of knees. So many, in fact, that the team would be desperate enough to sign a player it had deemed worthy of retirement just a little over a fortnight ago.
Confused? Not to worry.
I can sum up the Steelers' injury woes during the past few years in one simple sentence:
It's hard to pinpoint, exactly, when the injury bug first infected the Steelers, but given the team's issues on the offensive line last year and the sad state of its current linebacking corps, I'm going to say it was probably during a disastrous 2012 preseason when, even though the main goal of every team is to survive the summer healthy, Pittsburgh somehow lost its first-round draft pick, guard David DeCastro, to a knee injury (the first domino in a chain reaction of super bad injury voodoo that forced the team to use 16 offensive line combinations in 2012 and 2013 and, at times, left them one more mangled knee away from using a Heinz Field hot dog vendor to protect Ben Roethlisberger's blind side -- I'm actually being serious, go check the depth charts) ...
then, the week after DeCastro went down, the Steelers watched in car-crash horror, like the rest of us, unable to look away, when rookie linebacker Sean Spence, a smart, fast, relentless defender -- the kind of scheme-specific, high-value gem the Steelers' scouting staff seems to unearth in every draft -- was blocked from the side while chasing Panthers backup Jimmy Clausen ...
and suffered a grotesque, don't-Google-this-if-you're-eating-lunch kind of injury to his left knee (ACL, MCL and kneecap: pretty much obliterated) that so horrified linebacker coach Keith Butler at the time he said it would be "miraculous" if Spence were ever able to play again: Well, in one of the very few bright spots of the Steelers' recent run of injuries, Spence already has six tackles in 2014 after taking off 2013, which, as we all know, was a common theme on the Steelers roster last season, starting with the opener against the Titans when All-Pro center and team captain Maurkice Pouncey 's right knee was shredded by friendly fire from DeCastro ...
who also would miss time in 2013 with a foot sprain, forcing the Steelers to turn to Fernando Velasco , who, of course, later tore his Achilles tendon in Baltimore; later in that same disastrous season opener, just for good measure, I suppose, veteran inside linebacker Larry Foote also ruptured his biceps and was lost for the entire season, which started with four straight losses ...
an unheard-of skid in Pittsburgh and something the Steelers thought they could remedy with a rare midseason trade with the Cardinals for a former first-rounder, tackle Levi Brown -- not to be confused with Pittsburgh defensive back Curtis Brown, who hurt his wrist in November and was lost for the season, or Steelers tight end David Johnson , who was hurt Oct. 13 (wrist) -- no, Levi, who would have been the 10th offensive linemen to start for the Steelers last year if he had, in fact, actually made it through warm-ups -- he didn't -- re-injuring his triceps while, I guess, doing jumping jacks or something ...
which sounds like terrible bad luck until you hear about Detroit's Stephen Tulloch blowing out his ACL while celebrating a sack or the fact that in 2013 Levi actually remained healthy longer than all these other Steelers: Justin Cheadle (knee), Matt Spaeth (foot), Spence, Nik Embernate (knee) and Plaxico Burress (who survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2008 and later jail but not Latrobe, Pennsylvania, home to Steelers training camp, in 2013, going down with a career-ending shoulder injury), a list that includes running back Le'Veon Bell , who sprained both his knee and foot in camp but was able to come back in Week 4 just two weeks after fellow running back LaRod Stephens-Howling was lost for the season with a knee injury ...
a bizarre string of maladies that could have been brought on by a lack of conditioning, the Steelers' swarming, attack-style of play causing too many friendly-fire hits, the spray-painted mud/sand that sometimes passes for grass at Heinz Field or the leaguewide epidemic of players simply growing too large and too fast for their own good -- we'll probably never know -- what we do know is that despite all this, coach Mike Tomlin somehow duct-taped a roster together last December and beat two playoff teams (Cincinnati and Green Bay) in order to finish 8-8 ...
narrowly missing the playoffs for the second year in a row; a remarkable feat of sheer will, heart and organizational perseverance that should have resulted in a Coach of the Year nod if only the award were based on, you know, actual coaching; unfortunately, the only parting gift Tomlin got from 2013 was one last injury, this time to linebacker LaMarr Woodley , who ended the season on IR after hurting both calves and was later released even though he had 57 sacks for the Steelers during his seven-year tenure, a move that proved prophetic for Pittsburgh, which was fully healthy (except for rookie linebacker Jordan Zumwalt's bad groin) this season until heading to Carolina in Week 3, where the results were even more blood-curdlingly bad than Cam Newton's wardrobe ...
first, 13-year veteran Ike Taylor bookended Spence's horrific knee injury in 2012 with a nasty friendly-fire (this time it was teammate Lawrence Timmons , and if you're still looking for a pattern in all this, there it is) fracture of his right forearm (radius and ulna, again, for those keeping track at home) that made him look like a Tim Burton character and had him speaking in the third person -- "Ike will be back" he told a Pittsburgh newspaper -- a catastrophic loss for the 2014 defense, especially when you factor in the knee injury to linebacker Ryan Shazier (my pick for Defensive Rookie of the Year) and the dislocated wrist suffered by second-year outside linebacker Jarvis Jones , who is now on the IR/designated to return list for eight weeks ...
which is fine, really, considering the Steelers face three last-place teams in a row the next month -- but still left the team with no choice but to either activate former player and current defensive assistant Joey Porter ("Not going to happen," Tomlin said), use a cardboard cutout of Kevin Greene at outside linebacker behind Arthur Moats or sign the 36-year-old Harrison, who, at times in the Bengals' 3-4 scheme last year seemed to move slower than kudzu, which, I guess, makes him a perfect fit for the 2014 Pittsburgh Steelers' new injury-plagued Steel ER Curtain Defense.