With all the negative attention around the Pittsburgh Steelers this offseason, many were fearing that free agents might now want to come into this locker room, with even the head coach, general manager, and owner having been discredited by people of varying reputation.
Steven Nelson’s signing yesterday suggests that perhaps it’s not as bad as many were thinking, and though that will surely be the team’s ‘splash’ signing, they still have probably a handful of other free agents to bring in to fill some holes on the roster.
As far as Ramon Foster is concerned, however, he wasn’t having any of it when he appeared on Sirius XM radio over the weekend. When he was asked if he believed in the leadership of the team, he didn’t hesitate, nor mince words. I’ll let him speak for himself, as he does well so often.
Absolutely. I don’t even question that part of it, but you know how it is. No matter how successful a person or company is, in any avenue of being a professional workplace, if you have one or two situations that come up to where it can kind of infiltrate or pull guys behind, then that type of thing can grow further and further.
I think one of the most insulting things we’ve heard this offseason about us is nobody wants to be labeled as the football version of the Kardashians. And if that doesn’t piss you off I don’t know what will. The leadership has never been a question for me. Whether guys have been opposed to what a coach may think, that’s solely on them, and if you’re not man enough to actually go say something about that, then that should tell us a lot about your character and who you are.
Strong words from one of the elder statesmen and leaders in that locker room. He had more to say on the latter remark in an earlier answer, in fact, after referring to the 2019 season as “a whole eye-opener” in terms of “how we’re supposed to go about each other on the team”:
“If a guy has an issue with someone, it’s always good to be able to be transparent, and that’s one of the things that I’ve learned because that type of stuff, as you can see, now, post-season, can affect guys”, he said. “And sometimes you have your head down so much during the grind of the season that if you’re locked in, you don’t realize all the fluff that’s around you. So I think more than anything is guys come back this year and we’re doing the exact same thing, then we’re not who we say we are”.
He talked about how the team knows that it has underperformed given the talent that they have, only reaching the AFC title game once in the past eight seasons, but he hopes some good will come of the recent turmoil.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, and I think that stuff like this happening kind of brings guys closer together”, he said. “You know, the thick-as-thieves, likeminded people kind of join together at times like this, so I’m hoping this is one of the positives out of it”.
