The Steelers’ 2018 campaign was an absolute disaster, and changes are coming in the near future — involving both players and coaches.
Head coach Mike Tomlin could even end up getting relieved of his duties, due to his failures in managing personalities over the past year or so — dating back to the playoffs last season. It began when linebackers coach Joey Porter got involved in a bar fight, with Antonio Brown doing a Facebook live stream while the team/Tomlin were breaking it down int he locker room after a playoff win. Then when you factor in the James Harrison situation, and all the Antonio Brown-Ben Roethlisberger drama — combined with Le’Veon Bell — it’s safe to say the dissension is what kept the team out of the postseason this year.
And Steelers tight end Jesse James had the perfect way to sum it all up, which he did in speaking with Jacob Klinger of PennLive.com.
“Ah man, we are — Kardashians,” James said. “We have, I mean, we’re something. It’s Le’Veon Bell issues, you have more stuff popping up weekly, Jeremy Fowler’s reporting stuff about Le’Veon every other week. There’s just people calling people out.
“We were in the front of the ticker on ESPN too much for just reasons that weren’t related to football and not for us playing great ball. It was more distractions.”
He was then asked about what those distractions were, but didn’t offer many details.
“Obviously there was many things,” James said when asked if he was referring to the quarterback. “I’m not gonna point out individually each one, but there was a lot of things that went on that didn’t need to.”
Well said. It may be time to clean up the mess — which means trading Antonio Brown and absorbing the $21 million dead cap hit — and finally putting the Bell saga behind them.
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