A few weeks ago, the Steelers' veteran players came together and banned younger guys from playing ping pong and stuff. Astoundingly, that didn't immediately turn the season around and the Steelers' current losing streak continued. Now, coming out of the bye week, Mike Tomlin has decided that those pesky recreational games still have to be put in their place, so now nobody is allowed to play anything.
According to that NFL article, "separate factions developed between the veterans and those on the verboten list," (called it!) and this is beginning to look more and more like a circus. We're not used to thinking about the Steelers that way, but imagine if, say, the Rams or the Lions or the Chargers had an 0-4 start, and then you heard something like their veteran safety and starting QB were getting a little bit feisty through the media, or the chatter was about who on the coaching staff should be fired and when, and should they trade an aging frachise player in an effort to rebuild? It doesn't sound odd at all to say those kind of things about teams you're used to being bad. That's just stuff that happens in the NFL. Not in Pittsburgh, though. Pittsburgh is different. They have a winning culture, their players have a team-first midset, and organizational stability is a hallmark of the Rooney family's ownership.
Well, those Steeler ideals are officially a thing of the past. The 2013 Steelers are bad. They're just like any of the NFL's 31 other franchises, in that they too can fall on hard times. Now, it's still a little bit hasty to start firing coaches (Tomlin in particular) or trading Ben Roethlisberger. But the Steelers absolutely need to get it together or those rumors are going to start becoming reality. It won't be easy, going to play the upstart Jets in New York and coming home for a tilt against Baltimore, but this organization can ill afford mank more losses.
