The Steelers lost a meaningless football game to the Washington Redskins last night, but the biggest loss of all from the game may be cornerback Ike Taylor, who broke his thumb during the game’s first series and will be out of action for an undetermined amount of time.
Taylor is currently the only cornerback on the Steelers roster who has proven himself capable of covering receivers in man-to-man situations. If he misses lots of time this preseason and is rusty for the opening game against Baltimore, the Steelers could be in trouble.
The secondary is already mostly awful at stopping the pass and an injury like this to one of the league’s better cover corners is not good news at all. Without Taylor, Bryant McFadden and William Gay become the team’s top two cornerbacks and Keenan Lewis is next in line on the depth chart.
Hopefully Taylor heals quickly and only misses a week or so, but just thinking of him missing any time throughout the year shows how valuable he is to the Steelers at this point.
