The Pittsburgh Steelers have dealt with numerous distractions in their locker room over the past year, and one member of the team admits he and his teammates might as well star in their own reality TV show.
After Pittsburgh’s 2018 season ended with Antonio Brown being benched for disciplinary reasons and no trip to the playoffs, tight end Jesse James — a soon-to-be free agent — had a sobering description for the way things went.
“Ah man, we are — Kardashians. We have, I mean, we’re something,” James told Jacob Klinger of PennLive.com. “It’s Le’Veon Bell issues, you have more stuff popping up weekly, Jeremy Fowler’s reporting stuff about Le’Veon every other week. There’s just people calling people out.”
Before the Brown situation reached a boiling point, Le’Veon Bell left the Steelers in limbo for the entire season over a contract dispute and never communicated his intentions. He ended up sitting out the year, and James admitted that became a distraction.
“We were in the front of the ticker on ESPN too much for just reasons that weren’t related to football and not for us playing great ball,” James added. “It was more distractions.”
James said the Steelers need to do a better job of dealing with distractions going forward, but in reality they need to prevent them. Bell is as good as gone, and there’s a good chance Brown will be traded. That might result in less drama in Pittsburgh, but it would also leave the team without two of its best skill players.
Brown was supposedly dealing with a knee injury last week, but reports have indicated he was benched after he got into an argument with Ben Roethlisberger and went AWOL. It has since become clear the star wide receiver has lost the trust of many of his teammates.
Unless their goal is to produce their own Kardashians-type show in 2019, the Steelers need to make some serious changes this offseason. James isn’t the only member of the team that realizes that.
