On the surface, Pittsburgh Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey and outside linebacker Bud Dupree appeared to be the team’s two most-vocal players in the locker room on Wednesday when asked to talk about the departure of outside linebacker James Harrison and his subsequent signing with the New England Patriots. Both players apparently didn’t hold back anything when discussing Harrison and how he allegedly forced his way off the team. On Thursday, Dupree went after Harrison again during a morning interview on SiriusXM NFL Radio.
Dupree was first asked if he was surprised at what all has transpired with Harrison over the course of the last several days.
“We weren’t surprised about just the let go part, but we was most surprised about the Patriots,” Dupree said. “We just thought it was funny.”
Later in the interview, Dupree was asked about if he and some of the other younger outside linebackers on the Steelers thought initially that Harrison would be a role model for them and if that ultimately went the other direction.
“It just went a different direction,” Dupree said. “We just thought he would be just a role model to us. We really wanted it to happen. We like him as a person but just as a player, we just feel like he’s just all about himself.”
Dupree was then asked to elaborate more about Harrison as a teammate in the locker room and during the long question Harrison’s infamous near-daily social media videos of him lifting was brought up. Dupree unexpectedly had something to say about those workout videos of Harrison’s.
“We feel like the workout videos was just to stay relevant, just stay on the internet, stay buzzing,” Dupree said. “He probably is the strongest person in NFL football, on the team. He’s really just the only person that can just lift weights like that in the weight room. Anybody else try to go in there like that they’re told to stop lifting. So, he just goes in and really does his own thing and then just looks at us like, ‘What are we going to do?'”
While Dupree really didn’t disclose much of anything else during his Thursday morning interview outside of how the team is now trying to move forward and prepare for their Sunday home regular season finale against the Cleveland Browns, he did take one last shot at Harrison’s teammate character.
“We looked at him as a real role model, as a real leader, and he just never really gave it to us,” Dupree said.
