Does Chase Claypool’s ankle injury change Steelers preseason plans for starters?

Chase Claypool went down with an ankle injury at the end of practice. Should this scare impact how the Steelers deploy starters in final preseason games? 

Twitter quickly blew up on Tuesday afternoon with some frightening news. Near the tail-end of Steelers training camp practice on August 17th, wide receiver Chase Claypool landed awkwardly and suffered what was then called a lower-body injury.

As he was helped off the field and into the locker room by teammates, fans feared the worst and they could only think about how this wouldn’t have happened had the team ended practice a few plays earlier. Fortunately, it was reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter that the injury Claypool suffered was just a “minor ankle sprain” and that he would be fine.

Though the Steelers avoided a major disaster to their 2021 season as Claypool escaped practice with just a minor injury, it makes me wonder about whether or not the Steelers think twice about playing their starters in the remainder of the preseason.

How much should Steelers play their starters in preseason?

Some teams, like the Los Angeles Rams, mostly avoid playing their starters altogether. They essentially claim that the risk of injury greatly outweighs the reward or trying to shake the rust off.

I can see this both ways. On one hand, you want your players to come firing out of the gate. A sluggish 3 or 4 game start to the season could really hurt a team’s playoff chances. At the same time, what sort of Super Bowl chances do you really have if a few of your star players go down?

While injuries to high-profile players in preseason are somewhat rare, they still occur. All it takes is one wrong tackle or planting off your foot the wrong way to cause a serious injury.

Many would argue that these things are going to happen routinely in the regular season, so why not play your starters often in the preseason as well? My counter-argument to that would be: why pre-expose yourself to any additional risk. The more snaps a player plays throughout the year, the more likely it is that they will be tackled awkwardly, plant on their foot wrong, or take an unnecessary shot to the head or lower body.

So this brings us to the question of how much should the Steelers play their starters in the remainder of the preseason. Up to this point, the starters have played very sparingly, but they are set to see their biggest work this week against the Lions.

Personally, I think the Steelers should resume as they always have – playing their starters for much of the first half of their third preseason game (in future seasons, it will be their second preseason game as they will only play three). I think it’s important to get some quality reps in against first-team defenses before the start of the season without exposing their players too much to the chance of injury.

At the end of the day, there are going to be injury scares, and the Steelers are very fortunate that Chase Claypool only suffered a minor ankle sprain. However, this is football, and I’m sure they are going to understand that some of these things are going to happen outside of their control. Pittsburgh should deploy their starters in the preseason the same way they always have.