By Teresa Varley
Steelers.com
Wide receiver Santonio Holmes met with head coach Mike Tomlin on Monday and addressed his teammates in regards to an incident last week that caused him to be deactivated for the Giants game.
Holmes was pulled over by Pittsburgh Police because his car was similar to one they were looking for and at the time marijuana was found in his car.
Holmes was deactivated for the Giants game, but after meeting with Tomlin he is expected to start this weekend against the Washington Redskins.
"Santonio came in to visit with me yesterday morning," said Tomlin. "It was a very productive meeting from my standpoint. As a football team and an organization in terms of our view of the situation, we have laid it to bed. Satisfactory action has been taken from our standpoint. We had a team meeting yesterday and he addressed his peers about the issue. He released a statement that expressed his feelings about the issue."
Tomlin said part of the reason for deactivating Holmes was to eliminate distractions as they prepared for games.
"For us we are moving forward," said Tomlin. "All in all the whole way we approached this thing was to minimize the distractions for our football team. I thought that we did that. We came in and dealt with it yesterday and put it behind us. Tomorrow we move forward as a team and he will be included with that. "
No action has been taken against Holmes by the NFL and if there is any, it won't be until the case has been finalized.
"In terms of what action the league will take it really depends on the outcome of the criminal case," said Tomlin. "We'll let that process run its course. From our standpoint we dealt with it sufficiently. That kind of outlines the steps we took and he took and we'll move forward."
Tomlin would not discuss if the Steelers fined Holmes, choosing to keep that matter in-house. He also said he is not concerned with reported complaints from the NFL Players Union regarding Holmes being deactivated.
"I am not concerned about their view on whether or not I choose to activate him," said Tomlin. "We have 53 men on our team. We choose to activate 45 for a particular game. That's what we chose to do."
