Promising Pittsburgh Steelers rookie WR to make NFL debut vs. Raiders

Pittsburgh Steelers rookie wide receiver Roman Wilson will play against the Las Vegas Raiders, marking his NFL debut. The debut comes at a time when the Steelers are experiencing injuries around their team, and without a spot to elevate a wide receiver such as Brandon Johnson from the practice squad, the Steelers will turn to Wilson.

Wilson suffered a high ankle sprain in training camp that kept him out for seven weeks. He has now had 11 straight full practices in a row, and the Steelers finally feel he is ready to play. Offensive coordinator Arthur Smith said this week that Wilson’s debut was coming sooner rather than later, and he just needed to get his conditioning up as well as get everything in the playbook down.

“I just think he keeps working. You’re talking about a lot of time missed for a young player. He’s working very hard, I would imagine it happens sooner or later, but it’s not you’ve got to meet this certain metric. A lot of it is getting back into game shape. You talk about a young player — we have such a long way to go too. He’s doing really well, making progress every day. I imagine it will probably happen sooner rather than later,” Smith said about Wilson.

It is unclear how many snaps Wilson will play, but it is unlikely to be a huge role as they slowly work him back into the rotation full-time. When the Steelers elevated Brandon Johnson to be their WR5 a week ago, he got around ten snaps, and Wilson could end up playing around the same amount of snaps overall in his debut.

• BETTING: Check out our guide to the best PA sportsbooks, where our team of sports betting experts has reviewed the experience, payout speed, parlay options and quality of odds for multiple sportsbooks.