Ryan Shazier’s goal of playing football again has not changed, but his contract status is set to change at the start of the new league year.
Shazier’s contract with the Steelers is expiring and team owner Art Rooney II said recently that the team is open to working out a new deal that allows Shazier to remain employed by the team as he works toward realizing his goal. Shazier was in Atlanta on Friday and said that no deal has been hammered out at this point.
“Really nothing has been decided,” Shazier said, via Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I definitely want to be with the Steelers. I was drafted here and everything’s been going great. I just love the atmosphere, I love the family aspect of it, but I also love the way they do business. So I definitely want to stay.”
Shazier said that doctors have told him that a return to the field is “attainable” and he spent last season helping out off the field, but told Mike Florio on PFT Live that not being able to make plays on defense to help stop the Steelers season from going south.
“It definitely hurt that I wasn’t there [on the field],” Shazier said.
Shazier said he sees his future in football whether he returns to the field or not and hopes to “give back to the game what it gave me.”
