Following three straight losses and a couple of low-effort plays by members of the Pittsburgh Steelers, leadership and the Steeler Way have become hot topics of conversation. Members of the national media, former players, and just about everybody else have given their two cents on the state of the Steelers’ locker room. The general consensus is that the team lacks leadership on offense and that the great winning culture and tradition that the team is known for may be fading away.
Former Steelers S Ryan Clark appeared on ESPN’s Get Up on Friday morning and talked about this topic. He discussed when he thought the tide started to turn with the culture in Pittsburgh.
“When we won championships, and I love him, and Ben Roethlisberger came out and said the old Steeler Way, or whatever it is, is gone,” Clark said. “Offensively, that left when Jerome Bettis left. Offensively, that left when Hines Ward left.”
Bettis left following the 2005 season after the Steelers brought a Super Bowl championship back to Pittsburgh. Ward left six years later after winning one more Super Bowl and appearing in another. Clark’s assertion is that the Steeler Way and the leadership on offense have been gone for the last decade. That is a big statement, and one that former teammates may take exception with. The great offensive lines of those years, featuring guys like Maurkice Pouncey, David DeCastro, Alejandro Villanueva, and Ramon Foster, seemed to have the cohesion and leadership that the current iteration of the Steelers are lacking.
“You know who led the Steelers when I played,” Clark said. “James Farrior, Larry Foote, Casey Hampton, Brett Keisel, Ike Taylor, Troy Polamalu. We didn’t need an offensive leader. You need to go do your job. We’ll lead from this side. When that changed, when the leaders stopped being the guys that stopped people from scoring, and it became the Killer B’s, let’s go score points, let’s go do all that. There was no leadership. There was no standard to be held to.”
That is a pretty damning indictment from Clark and one that does not necessarily make sense with the current team. The pendulum has very much swung back in the direction of the leaders in the locker room mostly being on defense. Guys like Cameron Heyward, T.J. Watt, Alex Highsmith, and Minkah Fitzpatrick provide that leadership.
“When that switched to the offensive side, when Ben Roethlisberger became the leader of that, it changed the entire locker room,” Clark said.
It is hard to trace everything back to the Killer B’s years. The offense features zero players from that era. The offense is still very young and still finding its identity. WR Diontae Johnson is the only starting player on that side of the ball who has been around for more than one contract. Years of failing in the draft have caught up to the Steelers in that way. From 2013-20, only five players are still on the roster who were drafted by the team. Of those five, just Johnson, Chukwuma Okorafor, and Mason Rudolph are on offense. So while there are kernels of truth to what Clark is saying, there is a lot of context missing.
