After week of little food, activity, lost weight, Steelers LB Cole Holcomb back from illness
After going through a 22-month ordeal that followed a significant, career-threatening knee injury, Cole Holcomb didn’t need any further adversity to prove his resilience.
An illness serious enough it confined the Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker to his home for a few days and will cause him to miss at least three games became the veteran’s latest roadblock.
“It was hard because it’s something out of your control,” Holcomb said Friday from the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. “It’s just one of those things where you just had to let it pass. You didn’t know when it was gonna happen, and they were just monitoring it until it came back down and everything was good.”
Holcomb missed two full weeks of practices — six sessions between Oct. 30 and Wednesday — and sat out again Friday. He was away from the team last week. The unspecified condition temporarily thwarted what had been a feel-good story involving Holcomb this season after returning to action following a lengthy rehab from tearing multiple knee ligaments during a November 2023 game.
Holcomb returned to full practice Thursday but will miss the Steelers’ Sunday home game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Holcomb said he had trouble keeping food down and couldn’t work out. He lost some weight (he said it’s returned) and said that first day back at practice was difficult but he felt much better by Friday.
“I was just trying to pound fluids,” said Holcomb, a seven-year NFL veteran who joined the Steelers via a three-year contract in 2023.
“I was just honestly trying to flush the system as much as I could, just trying to get better.”
The timing worked out for the Steelers that Malik Harrison’s return off injured reserve coincided with Holcomb’s absence, giving the Steelers three inside linebackers when starters Patrick Queen and Payton Wilson are factored in.
Holcomb, though, was acquired to be a starter and started 56 of 58 career games before this season. He’s started three times for the Steelers in 2025.
The Steelers might prefer to ramp Holcomb back up before placing a heavy workload on him so soon after his illness. Regardless, he’s glad to be back on the field.
“Yeah,” Holcomb said, “it feels good.”
Chris Adamski is a TribLive reporter who has covered primarily the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2014 following two seasons on the Penn State football beat. A Western Pennsylvania native, he joined the Trib in 2012 after spending a decade covering Pittsburgh sports for other outlets. He can be reached at cadamski@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.