Plenty of Steelers defensive players might not have a good excuse for a playoff performance in Baltimore that made the vaunted Steel Curtain look like a shower curtain. Linebacker Patrick Queen does.
Via Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, Queen played on Saturday night despite having “a really bad bout with the flu.” Queen, per the report, received four IV bags before the game.
The Steelers never disclosed that Queen had an illness. Unless he bought and administered the IV bags on his own, the Steelers knew or had reason to know something wasn’t right.
Which makes it possible that the whole defense had the flu. (Cameron Heyward had an illness that kept him from practicing on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, and kicker Chris Boswell didn’t practice on Thursday and Friday due to illness.) If more players than Heyward, Boswell, and Queen were sick, it would explain plenty about why they seemed to be so sluggish and out of sorts in a win-or-go-home game.
Regardless of whether others were ill, it’s another example of the league’s failure to eliminate inside information that can be disseminated and utilized by those who would place wagers knowing things that the average person, and perhaps the sports books, don’t. Given that the NFL’s in-house media operation has blown the whistle on this one, it underscores the fact that the league isn’t nearly as concerned about this problem as it should be.
