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Troublesome start Five Steelers hurt in running drills on first day of camp
By Don Banks, Sports Illustrated LATROBE, Pa. -- The Pittsburgh Steelers won't conduct their first training camp practice until Saturday, but they already have the early lead in this season's race for the most bizarre injury. Dan Kreider, the team's starting fullback and rookie of the year last season, strained his right calf muscle Friday morning just walking in the hallway of the team's dormitory. Kreider wore an ace bandage on his leg and used crutches to get around the rest of the day, and was placed on the physically unable to perform list. "It was a freak thing," said Kreider, in understatement. "It was really a stupid thing. I felt good coming in here [the Steelers reported Thursday night], and then I just stepped the wrong way in the hallway. It felt like somebody shot me in the back of the leg. "They think it's just a bad strain right now. They want to treat it as much as possible and then re-evaluate it in 24 hours or so." "He said he felt a cramp the night before and then he felt it again during the walkthrough," head coach Bill Cowher said. "We'll monitor it from there." Kreider, an undrafted free agent out of New Hampshire, went from the team's practice squad to rookie of the year after being added to the active roster Oct. 17, replacing injured starter Jon Witman. He was on the active roster for 10 games and made seven starts, paving the way as a lead blocker for star running back Jerome Bettis. Witman was released for salary cap reasons March 1 but re-signed later at a lower salary and reported to camp trying to win back the job. Kreider's injury appears to open the door for Witman to make his presence felt in the lineup. As long as Kreider is out, Witman will be backed up by Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala, who was re-signed mostly to be Bettis' backup at running back. Asked his reaction to Kreider's injury, Witman quipped: "Yeah, I pushed him down the stairs. Nobody saw it." Bettis, returning from offseason knee surgery, breezed through a series of 14 consecutive 40-yard dashes, which would seem to be routine for a pro athlete. "Really, people make a lot bigger deal out of it than it is," Bettis said. "It's just something you want to get through. We did a lot more than this in high school. Back then, we ran before practice for conditioning, then finished practice with 40 40s." Fourteen 40-yard runs were plenty enough for 335-pound offensive tackle Larry Tharpe, the only player to have any trouble completing the runs. He began grabbing the bottom of his shorts, gasping for breath, halfway through the runs, and cornerback Dewayne Washington even ran one 40-yard sprint with him as motivation. Unlike two years ago, when out-of-shape tackle Jamain Stephens couldn't complete the sprints even with most of his teammates encouraging him, Tharpe made it through. He almost sprinted through the final two, as if to show he wasn't as tired as he looked, with sweat soaking through his gray practice T-shirt. "I wasn't going to quit," Tharpe said. "It sounds easy, but it's not. But I was going to make it through even if I had to crawl." Stephens looked so bad in 1999, the Steelers wound up cutting him that night. Bettis wonders to this day if his failure set the tone for a 6-10 season that remains the Steelers' worst season since they were 5-11 in 1988. "That put a bad omen on our team," Bettis said. Cowher also referred to the Stephens incident, which ended with the lineman throwing up on the sidelines, several teammates yelling derisively at him. "You have to be able to push yourself," Cowher said. "Larry got through it and his teammates encouraged him. ... That's what you have to have, because you can't let your teammates down." The only player who didn't complete the sprints was rookie center-guard Chukky Okobi, the former Purdue lineman who injured a hamstring and was forced to quit after four runs. Another rookie lineman, Mathias Nkwenti, a fourth-round draft pick from Temple, was examined for a knee injury before the runs began and didn't run with the other players. Also injured were first-year linebacker Mike Sands (ankle sprain) and rookie running back Rod Frazier (hamstring strain). All five injured players went on the physically unable to perform list and can't practice until they pass physicals. Five injuries and practice hasn't even started yet, but Cowher said he still liked how easily most of the players completed the sprints. Linebacker Joey Porter punctuated the end of his runs by doing a back flip. "That scared me a little," Cowher said. "I told him I'd rather have sacks than flips."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
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