Do you like JuJu Smith-Schuster but just don’t like him as much as you want to? Well maybe this will help to push you over the edge on the Pittsburgh Steelers’ new number one wide receiver. The third-year player has already set up a charity foundation in his name, and one of the first acts that he participated in as part of that was to pay a visit to a local senior center at Squirrel Hill.
In what he dubbed “JuJu Foundation’s Senior Day of Caring”, he stopped in at the Forward Shady Senior Care, where he spent the day, in participation with a Sunnyside Academy eighth-grade class, with a group of seniors, carrying out a variety of activities and even painting the facility’s exercise room.
“Dance, paint, doing pretty much anything I possibly can to bring good spirit”, he said in an interview at the event. “I don’t really have grandparents around, so when I come around here, it’s awesome to have that feeling of caring, loving, family feeling”.
Smith-Schuster has undoubtedly brought a lot of energy to the Steelers organization since they selected him in the second round of the 2017 NFL Draft, and it didn’t take him too long after that to start his meteoric rise to both local and, a gradually building, national stardom.
It started from the time that he jumped into the ocean after he was drafted, and continued through a city-wide bicycle hunt. There was even room enough for his dog to become beloved in his own right, though to be fair it’s not at all difficult for people to fall in love with a dog.
It would be pretty easy to turn this into a compare and contrast situation with a certain former Steelers wide receiver, but I don’t think that will offer much value right now. Smith-Schuster is the future face of the organization both at wide receiver and more broadly, easily among the most popular players on the team and around the league.
It helps that last season he became the youngest player in NFL history to record 150 receptions as well as 2000 yards for his career in separate achievements. It helps that he rose to a Pro Bowl level by the end of his second season, topping the year off with 111 receptions for 1426 yards and seven yards.
But so much of why he is beloved also has very little to do with what he’s done on the field. The way that he carries himself with a great sense of maturity and responsibility, yet contrasts that with a fun-loving, child-like attitude has endeared himself to many people.
And now he is turning that outward more and more within the community. That will only continue to be more and more prevalent going forward after having established himself both as a player and as a brand, and his foundation will enable him to do good, as yesterday’s example shows.
Nice moves, @TeamJuJu! 😎 @steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster was at a local senior care home Friday to give back to tenants.
He painted an exercise room, served lunch and took part in line dancing! pic.twitter.com/Y92nXNuFrS
— WTAE-TV Pittsburgh (@WTAE) May 3, 2019
