Ever since Ben Roethlisberger talked about the Pittsburgh Steelers losing the “Steeler Way” on his podcast Monday, everybody has been giving their take. Members of the local and national media have been weighing in and it has made its way into the player press conferences with guys like RB Najee Harris and DL Cameron Heyward giving their opinions. The latest to discuss the topic is former Steelers DL Chris Hoke. He played his entire 11-year professional career with the Steelers from 2000-2011 and won a pair of Super Bowls with the team. He was asked on 93.7 The Fan’s The Cook & Joe Show Thursday morning to articulate what the “Steeler Way” is.
“It was about going out there and playing harder than everybody else,” Hoke said. “It was about [going out] there and playing faster than everybody else. It was hitting longer than everybody else. That’s the Steeler Way.”
It is a different era in the NFL. Practice time in pads is limited throughout the season and more players are getting veteran days off to help keep them healthy throughout the year. Hoke talked about this detracting from the tradition the Steelers are known for.
“I don’t know how often we had a veteran day off. I mean, guys like Aaron Smith never took a day off. Casey Hampton never took a day off. A lot of these guys never took a day off.,” Hoke said. “They worked every single day and we hit. It’s just a different time. It’s a different culture. It’s a different season in the NFL. When you start to give guys these days off ’cause they’ve been in the league 10 years or eight years, it kind of promotes this kind of soft…you’ve gotta practice.”
Hoke isn’t directly calling out any players, but rather lamenting the changing landscape of the league. Given his statements of what the tradition of the organization means to him, it is fair to wonder if the “Steeler Way” is even possible anymore. Things like two-a-day practices were outlawed in 2011 in the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and NFLPA. Units that require more collective work, like the offensive line, aren’t able to put in the many hours necessary to gel as a group.
The big idea that many keep circling back to is a lack of leadership on offense. The longest-tenured player with the organization on that side of the ball is WR Diontae Johnson. There are a few NFL veterans in the mix, but most of them are external free agents brought in too recently to have the culture of the organization ingrained within them.
“When you talk about who their leaders are,” Hoke continued. “It’s Najee Harris [who’s] been here three years, who’s fighting for his job. And it’s Kenny Pickett, who, right now, people don’t even know if he’s gonna be around next year…Those are the guys they point to as their leaders.”
Pittsburgh has long preferred to build through the draft. That is one of the big things that enables the continuity and in turn, the culture, to be passed from one generation of players to the next. Of the 22 starters listed on the current depth chart, just 12 of them were drafted by Pittsburgh—five on defense and seven on offense. Of those 12 Steelers-drafted starters, eight are still on their rookie contracts. It is a changing of the guard for the Steelers—the offense in particular—and they still need to find their own identity. There is no doubt that Roethlisberger’s comments have become a distraction, but maybe it forces the players to look inward and evaluate what the “Steeler Way” actually means to them.
