In the 2000s, the Pittsburgh Steelers returned to their winning ways, capturing two Super Bowl championships. They had a tight-knit group that dominated for most of that decade. However, Father Time catches everyone. Eventually, the Steelers lost most of their core pieces that helped them succeed. In the 2010s, they underwent a shift, going from a defensive-centric team to being more defined by their offense. James Harrison recently talked about how those two eras were different.
“From the time I was in Pittsburgh from 2002-2012, that’s what we had,” Harrison said Friday of team camaraderie on his Deebo and Joe podcast. “We had a group of dudes that were in there, everybody was in there together. We hung out in the off time. We’d go out, hang out, do whatever, go out, kick it. That’s just the atmosphere that those players from that time to us passed down, and it just continued.
“I ended up going to Cincinnati in 2013. I came back, unretired, and was back in 2014, and it wasn’t the same. You didn’t have the same, where it was a whole team. You had your little cut-up groups, maybe it was offense, defense. Before, it was just everybody.”
Harrison is one of the few players who stuck with the Steelers through their shift in identity. As he mentioned, he had a year-long stint with the Bengals in 2013. Then, he returned to the Steelers in 2014, sticking with them until 2017.
In 2014, his first season back in Pittsburgh, the roster looked very different. Franchise stalwarts like Troy Polamalu, Ike Taylor, and Brett Keisel were going into their final season with the Steelers. Other key pieces, like Larry Foote, LaMarr Woodley, and Ryan Clark were already gone.
In their place, players like Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell began to emerge. While the Steelers were still talented, some of those personalities were a little tougher to handle. Therefore, that might have contributed to why their locker room wasn’t as close-knit as it used to be.
However, it’s also important to note how difficult it is to build that kind of cohesion, especially in today’s NFL. Free agency makes it hard for teams to stay together for extended periods of time.
While the Steelers try to take care of their best players, it simply possible to keep everyone. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why they were unable to win another Super Bowl. The Steelers had good teams during Harrison’s second stint with them. However, they came up short in several big moments.
The Steelers have since gone through another reloading phase. Gone are many of their stars of the 2010s. They’re in a similar position to when Harrison rejoined them. We’ll see if they manage to recapture that magic that helped them succeed in the 2000s.
