Whether intentionally or not (I truly do not know which, nor care), Pittsburgh Steelers third-year linebacker Devin Bush has turned himself into a headline a time or two over the course of the past couple of weeks. While the bulk of the ire came in response to the retweeting of a disturbing video, many of his other tweets have gone under the microscope, and some have even questioned his mental health.
I’m not sure if that includes any of his teammates, but certainly there are at least one or two who would rather see him use his time more efficiently. During his early Tweet storms, lineman Zach Banner joked(?) that he was going to confiscate his phone once Bush gets back to Pittsburgh.
Defensive captain Cameron Heyward seemed to offer his own thoughts yesterday. Replying to a Bush tweet from Tuesday, which simply read, “Welcome to the mind of a psycho”, the 10-year veteran responded simply, “Calm your ass down”.
Calm your ass down
— Cam Heyward (@CamHeyward) July 14, 2021
Without any insider knowledge of the dynamic of their relationship, it’s difficult to know what to make of that, exactly. Is it purely in jest? Is there at least a degree of sincerity in there, and in what sense? Does he simply think Bush is playing around too much. Could he really think his teammate needs to ‘calm down’?
One thing is clear, which is that there are those in the media genuinely wondering what is going on in Bush’s head. Or, at least, they are claiming to wonder for the purposes of creating a story over it. I suppose it’s not materially significant which it may be.
Bush did address this recently. A local reporter made a tweet highlighting some training camp stories, including touching on the player’s mental health. Bush’s father commented on it, saying, “what a Duck”…though I suppose that could be an autocorrect. Bush responded to his namesake’s Tweet: “Chill pop, he a journalist he need a headline and what better otha than ya boy”.
Chill pop 😂, he a journalist he need a headline and what better otha than ya boy 😁 🤷♂️
— Devin Bush ll (@_Dbush11) July 14, 2021
Personally, I’m not overly interested, let alone concerned, over this ‘story’. Maybe at some point Mike Tomlin will tell him to cool it or something and that will be the end of it. The real concern is his recovery from a torn ACL and what he’s going to do on the field this year.
It should go without saying that one cannot diagnose sociopathy based on a short series of tweets, which some amateur psychiatrists have attempted to do in recent weeks. Bush is a (soon to be) 23-year-old man with fame, money, talent, and evidently, a penchant for ruffling feathers. You can go back to his college days tearing up a rival’s field to see that.
