Pittsburgh Steelers: A Ben Roethlisberger elephant in the room

Pittsburgh Steelers fans are still left wondering why things couldn’t have been resolved with Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell.

Under normal circumstances, they should’ve been two Steelers-for-Life candidates. Superstars who would play the majority of their careers in black and gold. Maybe even enter the Hall of Fame one day wearing that Steelers logo. Instead, both of them worked harder than normal to force their way out of town. Theories have abounded as to why. They wanted more money being the biggest one. However, it’s almost never that simple.

Robert Klemko of the MMQB was offered a big clue about their motivations when he spoke with a former Steeler named Josh Harris who spent a year with the team in 2014. His first impression? Something was seriously off about Ben Roethlisberger, the team’s star quarterback. That became clear when he intentionally fumbled a ball late in a game to protest a play call by then-offensive coordinator Todd Haley.

That’s a fairly strong accusation to make about a many-time Pro Bowler and two-time Super Bowl champion. Yet Harris wasn’t finished.

Ben Roethlisberger isn’t what one would call a leader in the classic sense

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Harris, while admitting that Roethlisberger is a great player, tends to rely solely on his talent to achieve his greatness. Leadership, something usually expected from a quarterback, isn’t something he embraces. He got away with it early in his career because he was surrounded by so many respected veterans, but as time went on things got worse.

"“Ben is a great player but he doesn’t try to connect with teammates,” Harris told me this week. “During my time there, I had conversations with vets like, Heath Miller, William Gay, Cam Heyward, Darrius Heyward-Bey, Will Allen, Ike Taylor, Troy Polamalu, Bruce Gradkowski, even James Harrison, but never Ben. Troy made an effort to talk guys. Not Ben though. And it was like that for others too…During practice when the team would be warming up a lot of times he would be sitting on the water coolers reading the newspapers. So when Ben is critical of players publicly without having a relationship with them, it can rub them the wrong way because they don’t know if it is out of love or what. And when you call out All-Pro guys, that definitely doesn’t sit well with them.”"

One can understand. Bell and Brown have big egos for obvious reasons. They’re great players and work tirelessly to stay that way. Having a guy who rarely goes out of his way to connect with them during practice or off the field call them out for any reason would be infuriating. Having endured something like that for several years, despite the stats and winning, would eventually wear a man out. Hence why both used their star status to force their way out of town.

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