{"id":70120,"date":"2025-12-25T04:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T04:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/70120\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T04:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T04:36:10","slug":"pittsburgh-steelers-linebacker-returns-to-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/70120\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker returns to practice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PITTSBURGH \u2014 T.J. Watt is back. Sort of.<\/p>\n<p>The Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker returned to practice Wednesday, two weeks after he had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/2025\/12\/12\/tj-watt-pittsburgh-steelers-lung-surgery\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">surgery to repair a partially collapsed lung<\/a> following a dry-needle treatment.<\/p>\n<p>Watt was a limited participant Wednesday. While coach Mike Tomlin said he\u2019s hopeful Watt will be able to return this weekend when the Steelers (9-6) try to wrap up the AFC North title with a road win against the Cleveland Browns, Watt\u2019s availability remains uncertain.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/2025\/12\/19\/dry-needling-nfl-drew-dalman-tj-watt\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chicago Bears center Drew Dalman is among the NFL players who use dry-needling treatment \u2014 despite the risks<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Still, having Watt\u2019s familiar No. 90 on the practice field is a good sign for a team that hopes to have him back in time for the playoffs at the latest, should the Steelers qualify for the third straight year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTJ is one of our leaders, so I love having him around,\u201d quarterback Aaron Rodgers said. \u201cNot sure what his status is going to be, but just his presence is good for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Watt was named to his eighth consecutive Pro Bowl on Tuesday. The 30-year-old is having a somewhat down year by his standards, with just seven sacks through 13 games played, though he also has two forced fumbles and an interception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 T.J. Watt is back. Sort of. The Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker returned to practice Wednesday, two&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[241,1418,73,75,74,726],"class_list":{"0":"post-70120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-pittsburgh","11":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","12":"tag-pittsburgh-news","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}