The Steelers must fix their soft tissue injury rate from 2024

The NFL offseason is an exciting time for fans to discuss and analyze every move being made and forecast the implications it will have on the end results. What coaches are hired or fired, what players are resigned or allowed to leave, free agents brought in, and the incoming draft class are discussed ad nauseam until there is no subject or hypothesis left untouched and dissected one hundred different ways.

Except for injuries. No one ever talks about injuries. I get it. Injuries suck. It’s no fun in April to consider how the year could be derailed by crucial players getting hurt. Yet, every training camp, there will be players lost, and season results will be altered before it even gets started.

Three minutes into Mike Tomlin’s season ending press conference on January 14th, he brought up the impact that soft tissue injuries had on the season. He had good reason to do so, as the Steelers had fifty-seven man games lost to soft tissue injuries alone in 2024, which is extremely high compared to the rest of the league. The year prior, the team suffered 23 man games lost, and that number was enough to prompt Mike Tomlin to make a change from long-time Strength and Conditioning coach Marcel Pastoor along with his entire staff, save Garrett Giemont, the senior conditioning coordinator.

In came Phil Matusz from Boston College and a new assistant staff. The results speak for themselves, and it’s not good. The large jump for the new staff in man games lost during 2024 is a metric too large to ignore, but the NFLPA survey by the Steelers is even more alarming. The players dropped the grade on the strength and conditioning program from a B minus in 2023 to a C minus in 2024, bringing the Steelers in at dead last. When asked about individualized plans, the drop was from 9th in 2023 to 31st in 2024, and when the players were asked if the S&C staff helped them with their injuries, it dropped from 23rd to 32nd, which for those of you keeping score, is last again.

Some of you may be asking what exactly is a soft tissue injury, and how is it different from normal injuries that come from a high impact collision sport? There are two main causes.

One is trauma from a sudden force or impact. There’s not much a training staff can do about that problem. That is an injury that can happen on every play. Think of Justin Fields suffering an abdomen strain after getting hit hard when sliding against the Eagles. That qualifies as a soft tissue injury, and it’s just an unfortunate part of the game.

The other cause is repetitive strain from overuse, poorly designed training techniques, and suddenly becoming active and overworking the muscle/tendon/ligament. The new coaching staff having the diminutive and elder Russell Wilson doing a sled push over and over in the early days of training camp which injured his calf muscle hits all the squares on the soft tissue bingo card.

New safety Juan Thornhill was placed on IR in the first game of 2024 with a calf injury that had him miss a large portion of the Browns season, and who can forget Aaron Rodgers playing four offensive snaps for the Jets before tearing his Achilles tendon. Let’s hope day one of training camp won’t be another sled push test for either one of those players. Who am I kidding…if Rodgers does sign, he won’t be around for day one of training camp.

The Steelers suffered many hamstring, groin, and abdominal strains last season under the new staff. Proper stretching and warm ups, good technique and form while lifting, and listening to players when they say their body is being overworked by a certain move or activity would go a long way in not having a repeat of 2024.

Mike Tomlin promised change in that same season ending presser back in January, and that had the fan base buzzing with potential upheaval at the coordinator positions, or possibly lesser known position coaches. No one considered the Strength and Conditioning Coach. If a fan base knows the name of that person, it is a bad, bad sign. Let’s all hope this is the last article you read that mentions the name Phil Matusz. If he becomes a household name, it will be for all the wrong reasons.