The Pittsburgh Steelers are out of Latrobe and back at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, also referred to as the South Side Facility. We are already into the regular season, where everything is magnified and, you know, actually counts. The team is working through the highs and lows and dramas that go through a typical Steelers season.
How are the rookies performing? What about the players that the team signed in free agency? Who is missing time with injuries, and when are they going to be back? What are the coaches saying about what they are going to do this season that might be different from how it was a year ago?
These are the sorts of questions among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked, though there is rarely a concrete answer, as I’ve learned in my years of doing this.
Question: How does the locker room feel about Kevin Colbert fully backing Ben Roethlisberger’s public critiques of teammates?
As we get nearer toward the NFL Scouting Combine, that is typically when we expect to hear from General Manager Kevin Colbert. But frankly, Antonio Brown has basically forced the front office to come out and speak frequently already this offseason, and that included an early media chat with Colbert yesterday.
The long-time general manager addressed a number of topics, among them being the subject of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and his role as the leader of the team. As he noted, Roethlisberger is the only one on the roster with a Super Bowl ring with the Steelers.
One of the ways in which he has demonstrated his ‘leadership’, especially in the past couple of years, has been to make public remarks, whether on his radio show or in other interviews, about his teammates as a means of calling them out. I do believe that this is done with good intentions as a form of motivation, but we have heard that at least some in the locker room are not happy about it.
Yesterday, Colbert pretty much signed off on Roethlisberger’s right to do everything he’s been doing in that regard, which means that we can fully expect his radio show to continue, and to be the same as it has always been, which has featured remarks that we know have upset some players like Brown.
The question is, how is this being received today by the rest of the players in the locker room? Will the public endorsement make those who don’t like it feel powerless, especially after Brown gets traded? Does anybody see a potential problem developing from this, or is it really no big deal at all?
