MKRob Sports

According to Mike Bires of the Beaver County Times, if one more Steeler running back had gotten hurt Monday night against the Bengals the country would have seen the debut of Troy Polamalu running the football.

“Troy is always our emergency running back,” offensive coordinator Bruce Arians said.

The Steelers were down to just starter Rashard Mendenhall on Monday night.  Both Mewelde Moore and Isaac Redman left the game with concussions and rookie Jonathan Dwyer was a game-day inactive and out of uniform.  It would have been Pro Bowl safety Polamalu for the rest of the game if Mendenhall had gone down.

“Definitely,” said Polamalu, who played running back and defensive back in high school. “I practiced at running back during our bye week. It was nice. It was fun.”   Throughout his career, Polamalu has shown a talent for running with the football after intercepting passes or recovering fumbles.  Polamalu admits, however, that the results might have been different if he had had to run against real defenders.