Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tyler Boyd gave the Steelers some extra ammunition ahead of the teams’ Week 16 matchup, calling out a “lack of camaraderie” in Pittsburgh’s locker room when asked about wide receiver George Pickens’ effort in the team’s Week 15 loss to the Indianapolis Colts.
“It just shows the lack of camaraderie that’s over there. I can’t really talk for anybody, but when things ain’t going well, you still gotta perform at a high level and do what you can to help your team,” Boyd said via ESPN’s Ben Baby yesterday.
Steelers cornerback Joey Porter Jr. shrugged off Boyd’s comments.
“He wouldn’t know, he’s not in the locker room, so his opinion really doesn’t matter,” Porter said earlier today, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on YouTube. “I feel like he got a misread on the whole situation. Like I said, he’s not in the locker room, so he doesn’t know what’s going on in the locker room. It’s just all outside. So, yeah, that’s all I have to say on that.”
It should be good bulletin board material for the Steelers to get called out by an opponent ahead of a must-win game. The Steelers have already beaten Cincinnati once this season, in Week 12 before they went on their current three-game slide. While the two teams have gone in different directions since that game, it’s probably not in Boyd’s best interests to get the Steelers riled up.
With Ja’Marr Chase out on Sunday, Boyd and Porter might match up more against each other on Sunday. There’s little doubt that each guy is going to want to get the better of that matchup, and Boyd gave Porter extra ammunition to prove things wrong about the Steelers essentially being a team that’s falling apart.
The Steelers haven’t looked good lately, and there’s been a lot of questions about attitude and effort inside the locker room. Most of it has just been outside noise, so it’s different when it’s coming directly from an opponent. Boyd, despite being from Pittsburgh and attending Pitt, doesn’t have any clue what the day to day is like in the Steelers’ locker room, so I’m sure it’s firing the team up to hear him take shots at them, and Porter did his best to basically shut him down today.
But with the way the Steelers have played lately, it’s not a surprise that opponents feel comfortable taking shots at them. We’ll see if they can prove Boyd and the Bengals wrong and snap their winning streak with a win on Saturday.
Watch the full media session with Porter below.
