You’ve got to wonder how Pittsburgh Steelers S Minkah Fitzpatrick’s postgame comments were received in the locker room. After the team dropped a game to another two-win team, he basically claimed that some of his teammates are not putting in the work and feel entitled to success by virtue of playing for a historically successful franchise.
Maybe it will draw mixed reactions. Some might agree. Others might take offense. Especially if he’s had arguments over this matter with some of his teammates. There is, frankly, a lot that we don’t know about what went into him making the remarks. But he had a little more to say than just the juiciest bits.
“The only thing that people could do is evaluate their work week”, he said about what comes next, how to get better, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN. “Look in the mirror, evaluate their work week, evaluate their character, evaluate their love for the game, evaluate why they play the game, and if you’re doing it for the wrong reasons or if you’re doing it just because you like it and you don’t love it and you don’t love the ugly part of it, then you need to evaluate what you’re doing”.
Of course, we hear after every draft, every free agency period, about how the Steelers value football players, players who love the game. You know the lines. Volunteers, not hostages, and all that. They have traded or released players for seemingly not wanting to be there.
That sounds all good on paper. What does it look like in practice? If you listen to Fitzpatrick while speaking in an emotionally heightened environment, probably not great. But people get frustrated when they’re losing, especially if they’re not used to it. Especially if they’re giving everything they have and still not getting the results—deducing that others aren’t working as hard.
It would sure be informative to be a fly in the wall in that locker room. What causes Fitzpatrick to question how much others love the game? What does he see that causes him to raise questions about work ethic, about doing the dirty work?
One would imagine that he practices what he preaches. The best players tend to come with a reputation for being one of the hardest workers. Apparently, his note taking in particular is pretty legendary.
At a core level, it hurts to read that about your team. Especially from one of its most respected players, because with his reputation, what he says carries extra weight. Fitzpatrick’s comments indicate a need to clean house in the offseason, frankly.
Then again, these problems go away when teams are winning. It’s hard to care too much about how wins are produced when things are good. But now at the lowest moment of the seasons, tensions are high inside and outside the locker room. And we’re left standing here wondering what the resolution is—and when.
