It seems unlikely there will be anything resembling a normal offseason program for any team.
But if the Steelers would have had one, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger would have been a part of it.
The veteran quarterback told Ed Bouchette of TheAthletic.com that he would have been on the field in May, at least in some capacity.
“I was going to be ready to go for OTAs and the minicamps,” Roethlisberger said. “That was going to be the plan. Now I don’t know how much I was going to do, I don’t know if I was going to be doing team stuff or stuff like that, but I would have been definitely going to be out there ready to go.”
Of course, they’d have likely had to keep the reins pulled back on him as he recovers from right elbow surgery, though he’s continuing with his rehabilitation.
“Now that we don’t have those [practices], we took a step back and backed up a week,’’ Roethlisberger said. “We said let’s just make sure and slow it down some more and take it even a step slower. It’s going really, really well, though.
“The doctor is very ultra-conservative moving forward. We’re just trying to be smart, and putting the brakes on me a lot because I was kind of ‘Go, go go.’ You know me, trying to get back out there.”
He’s throwing at home, and has footballs that contain a microchip, so there’s data which he can compare to previous years.
“It reads the spin rate and reads the velocity and reads the spiral efficiency” he said. “All these things. We did it actually in training camp in 2018 so it’s actually cool, we have a baseline from a couple of years ago so we can compare, see where we are.
“It’s neat to have those tools because in your own mind you say, ‘Ok, that felt 50 percent, that felt 75 percent.’ I mean you can do that but it’s hard to really tell. We have this data and it’s making it easier and making it able to read these throws. Pretty much every throw we have data on. Right now I do like a 20-throw warmup at 10 yards and then we back up and we do 10 throws at 15, 10 throws at 20, 10 at 25 yards. I’m throwing it right now off the numbers and data, probably right around 60 percent. That’s just me choosing to be at that number. I know I can let it go and throw, but what’s the point, why? There’s no reason to throw as hard as I can right now.”
Now he should have plenty of time to ramp up his activity, whenever he’s able to get on the field with teammates again.