The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2020 season is now in the books. It ended in spectacular fashion — though the wrong kind of spectacular — in a dismal postseason defeat at the hands of the Cleveland Browns, sending them into an early offseason mode after going 12-4 in the regular season and winning the AFC North for the first time in three years.
Since then, they have lost several players in free agency who were key members of the offense and defense. Multiple starters retired, as well. They made few notable additions in free agency, and are banking on contributions on offense from their rookies, as well as perhaps a last ride for Ben Roethlisberger.
The only thing facing them now as they head into 2021 is more questions. Right now, they lack answers. They know that they have Roethlisberger for one more year, but was that even the right decision? How successful can Najee Harris be behind a questionable offensive line? What kind of changes can Matt Canada and Adrian Klemm bring to the offense? And how can the defense retain the status quo with the losses of Bud Dupree, Steven Nelson, and Mike Hilton?
These are the sorts of questions we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football is a year-round pastime and there are always questions to ask, though there is rarely a concrete answer. This is your venue for exploring the topics we present through all of their uncertainty.
Question: What’s going on with Devin Bush and his Twitter account?
The headline is just for clicks (yes, we run a business), but it’s clear that many have had their eyes on this story, and have wondered why we have not. I can’t remember the last time I’ve gotten so many messages and comments asking about why we’re not addressing a topic before.
Frankly, it’s one I’ve wanted to avoid. Not because I’m afraid to portray a player in a bad light, but because I don’t find it particularly interesting. But here we are, nevertheless.
Third-year linebacker Devin Bush apparently decided to use his holiday weekend to act up on Twitter. I’m not somebody who is interested in players’ personal lives; truth be told, there are only a few, like Cameron Heyward, I bother to ‘follow’ on social media, so most of what I see is what has been brought to my attention by others.
That is to say that I’m not intimately familiar with Bush’s typical online behavior, but he’s clearly been doing something different, because he managed to get himself trending. While the biggest concern many have had was his retweeting a video of a cat falling, though not to its death as I later learned (the original seems to have been deleted, if I’m not mistaken; I’m also not going to pretend I watched the whole video), he’s also found himself complaining about money and even telling fans that if they want him to get off social media to Venmo him $20.
It got to the point where teammates were beginning to comment, with Zach Banner saying he’s going to confiscate his phone once Bush gets back to Pittsburgh. Many have speculated that perhaps his Twitter account had been hacked (which one might think is plausible, given the requests for money), yet I feel we would have known by now if this were actually the case.
The latest is that he has turned off replies to his Tweets as of yesterday. So what exactly has gotten into him? Has he gone stir crazy? Has he been drinking too much? Is he just being a young adult with all the foolishness it entails? Is there anything that fans of the team—or the team—should be concerned about?
While he’s certainly made some remarks that have bothered people, he hasn’t done anything illegal. Much of it appears to be him just being honest about his perspective, his life, and his intentions, i.e. making money, of which he has already received over $13.5 million on his fully guaranteed rookie deal of nearly $19 million. One would think that the best way for him to make more would be to keep his brand clean, which he currently isn’t doing.
