I’ve got to be honest with you. I consume very little sports media outside of my job. I usually keep up with what the Pittsburgh Steelers’ beat writers are saying because, well, it’s relevant to what I so, but as far as much beyond that, I’m frankly not very interested. What little I do expose myself to is often amateurish, and, well, I have myself for that.
So in reality I don’t really know how far this actually went, but I know at least that former offensive lineman and now Twitter analyst Geoff Schwartz evidently took issue with Steelers running back James Conner and the manner in which he celebrated his first career touchdown on Sunday with his offensive linemen.
For those wondering about the Steelers OL celebration… here it is. It’s extremely over the top for the situation. Notice Foster and Pouncey pic.twitter.com/pHnVAzQXpr
— Geoff Schwartz (@geoffschwartz) September 9, 2018
In a Tweet that he posted shortly after it happened, Schwartz complained of the apparently excessive nature of the celebration that Conner shared, primarily with Ramon Foster and Maurkice Pouncey. They were the two most outspoken last week when Le’Veon Bell did not report, so he concluded that they were deliberately hamming it up, “100% sending a message” to Bell”.
He went on to continue to defend his position in several tweets, calling it “extremely over the top for the situation”, but he seemed to ignore what the actual situation was. A local product who overcame cancer, got drafted by his favorite team and just scored for the first time in his first start. That’s a pretty huge story that both he and his teammates would likely want to celebrate.
I can only assume that Schwartz wasn’t the only one talking about this, because Conner brought it up yesterday, and wasn’t happy, saying that the media “made it like I was throwing shade or something on Le’Veon because I celebrated with my linemen — I never understood that”.
He continued, saying that they “made that up. I scored my first NFL touchdown untouched, so you don’t do that often as a running back. As soon as I scored, I went back, turned, celebrated with them. I was just showing love”.
On the play, from the four-yard line, Conner carried the ball off right end, following a trap block from Foster to seal off the perimeter. The running back was indeed untouched, so full credit ought to be given for the line for the success of the play.
“If you don’t have a connection with your offensive linemen, that’s not good”, he told Jeremy Fowler. “They were happy for me. They saw me, everything I was going through, and I’m guessing it was special for them to be on the field with me at the same time. I didn’t like that when the media did that, saying I was being funny celebrating (like that)”.
It is, frankly, ridiculous that this was ever a thing in the first place.
