If the family trees didn’t make it obvious enough, the Pittsburgh Steelers consider themselves a family business. At least as far as multi-billion-dollar sports franchises go, anyway. It helps that everything originates at the top from the Rooney family, now in its third generation of majority ownership and with the next in line—Daniel Martin Rooney—already in the organization.
But the thing is, we’ve heard more than enough stories about how that actually bleeds into the locker room, that it goes beyond just talk. And it’s most interesting to hear the perspective of veteran players who come in from having experienced the culture of other organizations. Third-year running back Najee Harris mentioned that recently while out west to throw out the first pitch at an Oakland A’s game.
“We got free agency pickups and they tell me how [much] better this is as an organization compared to other teams, so just to be a part of this is an honor”, he said during a pre-game broadcast in which he discussed a handful of topics related to the Steelers.
Pittsburgh has been more active in free agency during Harris’ tenure, actually, so there are quite a number of players from whom he may have had stories about how things are done elsewhere. Just this offseason alone, the Steelers have signed or otherwise acquired numerous veterans who would fit the bill. An attempt at a complete list of those with two or more years of experience, as it currently stands:
Patrick Peterson; Allen Robinson II; Markus Golden; Isaac Seumalo; Elandon Roberts; Keanu Neal; Le’Raven Clark; Chandon Sullivan; Armon Watts; Cole Holcomb; Nate Herbig; Tanner Muse; Braden Mann; Breiden Fehoko; Dan Chisena. That’s a lot of new names to hear from. And that’s not even including all of the names from 2022 like James Daniels, Mason Cole, Damontae Kazee, Mitch Trubisky, and Levi Wallace. Almost all of them end up feeling the same way and buying into the Steelers culture.
“To be able to have the opportunity to play for the Steelers, and obviously going there and experiencing the great guys they’ve got there, from Mr. Rooney, Coach T, and even Omar [Khan], who’s our new GM, but who drafted me was Kevin Colbert. All of them, just to meet all those people and how great they are and how well they run the organization”, Harris said, helps put things into perspective about what it means to play in Pittsburgh.
Of course he also repeated plenty of other things he’s said a dozen times before about Mike Tomlin and all of that. Now he’s going into his third season, already a captain of this team, and a flag bearer for everything the organization is supposed to stand for. He’s become one of the guys who others turn to in order to understand what it means to be here.
