NFL GridIron Gab Daily Digest

It’s been talked about for awhile now that come opening day with Ben Roethlisberger watching from home, the team will go with Byron Leftwich as the starter at QB against the Falcons at home. Maybe, maybe not. Right now I’m willing to bet it’s 50-50 between Leftwich, who wasn’t with the team last year, and Dennis Dixon, who started the teams critical loss in Baltimore in November.

With that, Mike Tomlin isn’t gonna play around with preseason games and all the rest to decide who is going to start against the Falcons. The teams official site reports he’ll make that decision by July.

Steelers coach Mike Tomlin says he’ll decide on his Week one starting quarterback by the time training camp opens in late July. “Really, it’s not a three-man quarterback competition at this point,” Tomlin said. “We know what all three men (Byron Leftwich, Charlie Batch and Dennis Dixon) are capable of doing. All three men, at different points in time, have benefited us and helped us win football games or played winning football. We know what we’re working with. We’re going to spend the rest of this offseason teaching, re-acclimating in some cases, as with Byron Leftwich, and then we’re going to make decisions and move forward.”

It will be interesting to see what happens if he makes that decision, and that QB gets outshined in preseason. Can he go back on it? Would he? For now, I think Dixon is the answer, but from all indications, Leftwich it sounds like is in the drivers seat to be the opening day starter.

Shaun Ellis has been denied an extension by the Jets, and now he may find himself on another team. Word is the team has been shopping Ellis, and the future for the Jets big man is unclear as even he doesn’t know where he will land to start the 2010 season.

The New York Jets have reportedly been shopping defensive end Shaun Ellis for months without finding any takers. Ellis was denied an extension and is due to make $3.35 million in the final year of his contract. The Jets have taken the approach that they will not renegotiate players’ contracts, except for those still on their rookie deal. Ellis, who turns 33 in June, ranks third on the franchise’s all-time sacks list with 68.

Ellis has even spoken out about the chance of being let go by the club.

“There’s always a possibility,” Ellis said. “There’s no secret that they want to get younger guys in, but I feel like I still have a lot of years to play and I’m just trying to do the right things I need to do. I’ll just go out and play and have a good season and let it work itself out, whether it’s here or somewhere else.”

Brian Cushing is speaking out, and using some loud tones about testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug. The LB says he never took any sort of banned substance, and that he’s not sure how the substance got there.

Cushing confirmed he tested positive for HCG, a fertility drug that is on the league's banned substance list.

"The question of how it got into my body is still unclear," he said. "It's something that I'm very personally concerned about, just the fact that how it's there and what's going to determine it from happening again, and that's something we're going to have to medically investigate."

Cushing said that he was told HCG can get in your body from injecting it or because of tumors. He said this information led him to believe he had tumors. He did not say what kind of tumors.

"I personally know I'm not injecting myself with anything," he said. "I played the whole season thinking this could not only be my last season, but my last year."

Cushing added he is concerned about his health and plans to undergo tests to see "how this got into my body" and to try to make sure it doesn't happen again.

In a statement Saturday, Cushing said the test indicated "the presence of a non-steroidal banned substance." He said he took the test in September and was notified of the results in October.