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Brooke Pryor, ESPN Staff Writer
PITTSBURGH — Cameron Heyward shook his head before the question was even fully formed.
No, the Pittsburgh Steelers way, as former longtime quarterback Ben Roethlisberger asserted earlier this week, isn’t lost.
“Everybody’s entitled to their opinion,” Heyward said Wednesday. “But at the end of the day, we don’t really care. There’s games to be won. We haven’t played well the last two weeks, and that’s all that really matters.”
Of course, that’s easier to say from a defensive perspective.
Laden with All-Pros and ranked as the NFL’s oldest unit on a per-snap basis, the defense has an established leadership structure. Officially, Heyward and T.J. Watt are the voices of the defense as the elected captains. Heyward is the more vocal of the two, while Watt’s 2021 Defensive Player of the Year award coupled with his steely demeanor speaks volumes to the younger defensive players. And even without formal titles, Minkah Fitzpatrick and new-to-Pittsburgh veterans Patrick Peterson and Elandon Roberts have their own leadership niches.
“There’s so many different ways that you can identify a leader,” Peterson said. “We have a bunch of different leaders, we have vocal leaders, we have guys that don’t take any nonsense like the Cam Heywards, but you need those guys.”
It’s a thorough support system, and it shows on the field. While defensive breakdowns have been more prevalent in the last two weeks, it’s not for lack of effort, accountability or leadership. The other side of the field, though, is in a different position. While the defense is the league’s oldest group, the offense is the second-youngest.
And that take-no-nonsense guy? The Steelers offense doesn’t really have one.
After capturing their first 400-yard game in more than 1,000 days in the Week 12 win against the Cincinnati Bengals, the Steelers offense put up back-to-back clunkers.
Beyond the on-field issues — the red zone inconsistency, the lack of execution and the injuries — a significant factor in the offensive derailment is the lack of strong leadership, the kind that erases doubt and soothes tensions to create a united front.
The Steelers, though, believe they have the ability to find the necessary leadership in their own locker room. They already did once.
Looking to rally around each other after offensive coordinator Matt Canada’s firing on Nov. 21, the Steelers offense had much-needed, honest conversations with each other.
“Before that Cincinnati game, we kind of tried to vow to each other that we were going to hold each other accountable, that we weren’t going to allow BS into our room, and we were just going to stay true to each other,” left tackle Dan Moore told ESPN.
And for four quarters on Nov. 26, it looked like the offensive summit worked.
Music blared in the Cincinnati visitors’ locker room after the win, the familiar bass line of “Take Over Your Trap” by Bankroll Fresh — a favorite anthem of road wins — bleeding through the door that separated the players’ enclave from the press conference room. The Steelers only scored 16 points, but as an offense, they felt they were on the right trajectory.
Less than a week and a half later, the euphoria had all but evaporated, replaced by mounting frustration in back-to-back losses to teams with just two wins entering the matchups. Outside the locker room, criticism replaced the sounds of celebration, reaching an inflection point after Fitzpatrick’s post-Patriots loss assertion that the Steelers need more players who “want to work for it.”
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Internally, Fitzpatrick’s criticism was mostly well-received. One offensive player said Fitzpatrick made a “valid” point. But those external critiques? Not so much.
“Who is grabbing someone by the face mask and saying, ‘That’s not what we do,'” Roethlisberger said this week on his podcast, Footbahlin’ with Ben Roethlisberger. “Is that happening? Yes, you have guys on defense doing it, but you need guys on other sides of the ball doing it. … You need someone to stand up in that room, on offense, and be like, hey, this isn’t what it means to wear the black and gold.
“This isn’t what has been handed down from those teams of the ’70s. The Steel Curtain, the four Super Bowls, the Nolls, the Bradshaws, the Blounts. All those people, it’s unbelievable.” While players were reluctant to outright refute Roethlisberger’s claims, those in the locker room insist the recent failures of the team don’t indicate the collapse of a culture.
“Not everybody responds to rah rah vocalness,” Moore said, describing effective leadership styles. “Some people do pay attention to the quiet guy that does the right things, and that’s part of being a leader is knowing your team, their personalities and what they respond best to in certain situations and trying to be that for them.”
To Moore, this is a team that’s at its best when players rally together.
“We’re a young team,” he said. “I think getting down on one another and beating each other down isn’t necessarily the way to go. I think lifting each other up, encouraging one another, letting each other know that even though, ‘Hey, you might be down right now or you made a bad play. I got you. Just trying to stay together in times like this.”
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But, some acknowledged, there is a sort of leadership void — something that reflects the current state of the offense, a group in transition as it continues to navigate post-Roethlisberger life in the absence of established veteran leadership. It’s not that the offense doesn’t have any leaders, one offensive player said, it’s that the guys best-positioned either lack experience or aren’t naturally predisposed to be the facemask-grabbing, yelling-in-your-face leaders. Players like Pat Freiermuth, Allen Robinson II and Najee Harris have taken leadership roles by addressing the offense and initiating collaboration and open dialogue between teammates. None of the trio have official titles, though Harris was previously an offensive captain alongside Mitch Trubisky in 2022.
Still, the offense doesn’t have a singular focal point, one unifying voice. Not yet, anyway. The best candidate is the one who has the lone offensive captain’s title, the same one who’s struggling through an inconsistent second season and currently sidelined following ankle surgery.
“I think it’s just going to have to happen organically,” Moore said. “We are a group of young guys on offense, but I don’t think leadership has an age to it. I think guys lead in their own ways, in their own rooms. I agree that I think we do need that one piece, but I think that Kenny [Pickett] is slowly evolving to that.”
Indeed, Pickett’s best — and most-cited — trait is the intangible quality he brings as a fiery leader and confident tone-setter. Even after Pickett’s ankle surgery, coaches pointed to his leadership from outside the huddle.
“It’s huge,” interim offensive coordinator Eddie Faulkner said of having Pickett around during his rehab. “It inspires the coaches when you see him coming through there. But to be honest with you, I wouldn’t expect anything less from Kenny. That’s just how he goes about his business.”
While Pickett is a leader, and recognized as one in his second season by his teammates when he was voted the sole offensive captain, figuring out what buttons to push and when and how to press them is a process. Pickett’s predecessor was with the team for 18 seasons, but didn’t earn his first captaincy until his fifth season. He kept the title for two seasons before losing it in 2010. He regained it the following season and maintained it through the end of his career.
On his podcast, Roethlisberger acknowledged he was surrounded by a support system of long-time leaders and veterans of the vaunted Steeler way. Not only did he learn from defensive mainstays like Troy Polamalu and James Farrior, but offensively, Roethlisberger had players like Hines Ward, Alan Faneca and Jerome Bettis to show him the ropes. Pickett doesn’t have the same luxury.
Consider this: Not only did the Steelers lose 18 years of experience when Roethlisberger retired, but in the years around his retirement, the Steelers also lost offensive pillars and respected voices like Maurkice Pouncey, David DeCastro, Ramon Foster and Al Villanueva. Only seven members of the current offense played with Roethlisberger, who retired only two years ago. Of that group, four — Freiermuth, Harris, Moore and Anthony McFarland — only spent one season with the quarterback before his retirement.
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“I’m not trying to sit here and say he’s right or wrong,” Harris said, asked if Roethlisberger’s criticism was fair. “…Ben is a Hall of Famer. Ben has obviously been here, won the Super Bowl. He knows what the standard is. Ben is somebody who’s credible. I got here his last year, so I can’t really say I know what the Steeler way is. He’d been here with Troy, he’d been here with Jerome. He knows that really. So if somebody outside sees that, and he’d been in this building, and I mean you kind of could guess and say maybe he’s right, but I don’t know.”
The bridge from the old era of Steelers football to the new one is narrow, but that doesn’t mean the culture is lost. It does, however, mean the culture is evolving. What worked for decades isn’t necessarily as effective with the next wave of players. But, the offensive players insist they’re still a group built on grit — the organization’s defining trait — despite recent showings where they lacked the mental fortitude to consistently execute and produce.
And with a return to the open dialogue in the nine days since improbably dropping the Thursday night game against the New England Patriots, members of the Steelers offense feel they’re back to being the group they felt they were en route to becoming three weeks ago. But will all the talk lead to a tangible change on the field? “We’ll find out Saturday,” Peterson said, asked if he’s noticed a change in the offense this week. “We can do all the talking that we want. We have to go out and execute and be on one accord when it matters. We can do it all we want in practice, but if it don’t show up in the game, what good was that week of practice? So we’ll just have to wait and see what happens Saturday.”
