Blitzburgh Steelers

Chukky was diagnosed with a possible herniated disc in his neck, which could be season, or even career-ending.

To make matters worse, the only depth behind him is 6th round pick Marvin Phillip, and the Browns might have lost their 2nd C in training camp, so the pickings will he slim for another vet Center to backup Hartings.

http://news.steelers.com/article/67229/

K Train

Damn, we were just talking about this yesterday, hopfully hartings holds up all year.

Blitzburgh Steelers

Yeah, that's no kidding. We'd really better hope AND pray that Hartings holds up. He goes down we'll have to shuffle the whole line around, maybe Faneca to center, and then Simmons to LG and Colon to RG or something like that. That'd be a bad deal moving that much stuff around, or having Philip play C or w/e.

K Train

Yea, mabey willie colon, i dont think trai essex cold handle it. Mabey the DT that sits behind chris hoke. Backups dont have the luxury of playing one position.

They might sign one, mabey an undrafted free agent, but no one could match hartings.

Blitzburgh Steelers

Yeah, I don't know what they'll do for the backup C. It'll either be Faneca playing C with Colon at G, or maybe one of the backups from another position will get the shot at being the C...hard telling...and hope we don't have to find out.

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Blitzburgh Steelers

"We got some really good news on Chukky Okobi. Chukky had surgery performed today by Dr. Joe Maroon, and everything went very well," said Cowher. "We'll know more in the next couple of days, but there's a good chance he'll be able to play this year. It could be anywhere from four-to-eight weeks, and we'll know more as time goes on."

http://news.steelers.com/article/67307/

Hopefully he'll be able to come back, that's not a good feeling at all to have a 35 year old starter, and no backup for the season. I bet they do go ahead and draft a C early next year though, as the heir apparent to Okobi now. They might be scared of having Okobi as the starter with a history of potentially career ending neck injuries, regardless of if he recovers fully or not. Just my 2 cents on it.

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Blitzburgh Steelers

In case you don't wanna read the whole article, here's another key part, that we were speculating on in the other Okobi thread:

"Okobi was in surgery at the time his teammates were at the multi-plex, and then during Wednesday's night practice at St. Vincent College the Steelers did some things to prepare for his absence, the most notable being Kendall Simmons taking some repetitions at center.
"Kendall took some snaps. Again, it was just a precaution to see where we are," said Cowher. "When you lose a guy like Chukky, we talked about having Kendall do that before we got all of the results. Marvin (Philip) has done well. That's something you see when you get a fifth-year senior is a guy who's very mature, he's played a lot of football. To be able to draft a center (in the sixth round) like we did was a blessing in disguise. He's had a very good camp."

So apparently Cowher never intended to try Colon at C, but was talking about moving the starting RG (instead of, as I speculated, Faneca, the starting LG) to C, and he also has high hopes for Philip.

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