Looking ahead to the session …
• What: Steelers practice
• When: 1-3 p.m.
• Where: Rooney Sports Complex
• Media availability: 12:30-12:45 p.m., 3-3:30 p.m.
3:45: After sitting out practice on Wednesday, Ben Roethlisberger was a limited participant today, making it more likely Jones will be the starting quarterback against the Browns Sunday.
Maurkice Pouncey also sat out for the second consecutive day with a hip issue, while Antonio Brown has already been declared out for the game.
Cameron Heyward and Le'Veon Bell were both limited participants but were limited without injury. That suggests that not only will Bell not play, as I reported here, but Heyward won't go, as well.
Coty Sensabaugh and Ramon Foster were both full participants for the second consecutive day.
1 p.m.: Not much happening in the Steelers' locker room today, at least not like yesterday.
But I did catch up with Landry Jones for a minute to see if he was ready to spill the beans on whether he is starting this week or not.
Here was our exchange:
Me: What's up? You playing this week?
Jones: Am I playing this week?
Me: I don't know, are you?
Jones: Am I? You guys seem to know more about that kind of stuff than I do.
Me: I haven't heard anything. But could the plan be for this to go like last week, when you guys got out to a big lead and you were in there midway though the fourth quarter?
Jones: Yeah, get it done, go in and hand off right, hand off left and it's all good.
Me: Could this be a situation where Mike (Tomlin) doesn't want to give a bunch of guys off, including Ben (Roethlisberger) because that would give him three weeks off between games?
Jones: Yeah, that's a long time to have off. I've never had a first-round bye, so this is all new territory.
I've got a good relationship with Jones, so a lot of this was more playful than it comes off on sight. But it appears Roethlisberger will at least play a little bit this week before giving way to Jones.
THE SETUP
Reminder: We can’t report what we see in NFL practices, per league guidelines. So we’ll always just use this space for any allowable updates, as well as a quick repository for news after the practice and media availability.
It's Thursday, so it's the one time a week we can speak with Todd Haley and Keith Butler. DK and I will double-team that. I'll put any immediate news of note here on this live file, then I’ll have full coverage later.