The Pittsburgh Steelers kick off the regular season this Sunday on the road against the New York Jets. This will mark the return of Steelers starting quarterback Aaron Rodgers to New York as he goes against his old team. The Jets also have a starting quarterback in a revenge game as they will start Justin Fields, who got benched by Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin after starting six games and going 4-2.
We will spend the week breaking down everything you need to know about this game but let’s start with the big concerns we have this week.
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Injuries
The Steelers have a long list of players who have missed practice time and preseason games, but Tomlin has been evasive about just how bad some of these injuries are or even what they are. We will keep a close eye on the practice report this week to see how guys like Calvin Austin and Jonnu Smith are progressing.
Lack of preseason snaps
It won’t take long to see if the decision to rest players like quarterback Aaron Rodgers and edge defender T.J. Watt for the entire preseason. Rodgers is the player we are most worried about for a multitude of factors. First, he didn’t sign with the Steelers until late June; second, he’s 41 years old, and finally, this team is full of new starters on offense, and Rodgers has had no live reps with any of them.
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So many new faces
To follow up on the preseason snaps issue, the Steelers are looking at around 10 new starters between the offense and defense this week. That’s a crazy amount of turnover and there are bound to be some growing pains but will the team be able to together soon enough to get the win this week?
This article originally appeared on Steelers Wire: Steelers vs Jets: Early causes for concern this week