Does Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Martavis Bryant really want to be traded? According to a report this past weekend by Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, Bryant, or someone who represents him, did indeed ask the Steelers to trade him recently. On Tuesday, however, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was asked during his weekly interview on 93.7 The Fan to discuss that Bryant trade report.
“Yeah, I have talked to him I talked to him before and you know what it is, is sometimes, like Martavis, I talk to him, he doesn’t want to go anywhere,” Roethlisberger said. “Sometimes things come from agents, because they want what they think is best for the player and dont realize that it ends up hurting the player. I don’t know exactly what happened here but I do know that Martavis, there hasn’t been any inklings of unhappiness. It’s unnecessary drama.”
Roethlisberger then went on to take a shot at Rapoport.
“This is the first person that broke this story first was the same person that broke the story that I wanted to be traded and I know there’s zero-percent truth to that, so I kind of take some of the stuff that he says with a grain of salt, too,” Roethlisberger said.
Roethlisberger was then asked about the Sunday night tweets from Bryant’s girlfriend that have since been deleted that seemed to support the idea that the wide receiver wants out of Pittsburgh.
“Yeah, and I cant speak on that behalf,” Roethlisberger started. “Obviously, we landed [Sunday night] and we all saw that and I don’t know if it’s one of those things where at home you’ve got a bunch of people that are saying ‘Why aren’t you getting the ball? Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you do that?’ Almost just kind of gassing him up if you will. But, like I said, Martavis is an asset to this football team. He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do.
“Obviously, his numbers aren’t probably what he was hoping and expected and probably all of us to a certain extent, but you also understand he’s been gone for a whole year, it’s not like he missed six games, four games, eight games, it was a whole year, and that’s tough. And I’m happy to have him back as a teammate and a football player and I’m excited for what’s going to come down the road for him on this football team because I can see how close he is and we are together.”
Roethlisberger was asked if he’s seen any lack of effort from Bryant in the past several weeks.
“None whatsoever,” the Steelers quarterback said. “As a matter of fact, this last week I thought he gave more effort in the run game, in blocking for other guys. There’s a play, A.B. [Antonio Brown] catches a ball over the middle running towards Martavis, Martavis turns around and picks up a block and A.B. almost springs out of it. A.B. jumps up, starts celebrating with Martavis because he saw Martavis blocking. I think the effort was even better this week on his part in things like other than just the pass game.”
Now that Roethlisberger has addressed the Bryant trade reports Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin will likely have to do so during his Tuesday press conference and we’ll make sure to pass along any of his quotes to you when and if that happens.
