Let’s Hope the Off Field Stuff Stops Soon

The Steelers are typically the buttoned up, zip lipped, low drama franchise. They let their play on the field define who they are and they leave it there. However, over the past 2 off seasons their have been far too many off field incidents and Steeler players in the news for one reason or another.  We are all familiar with the Ben Roethlisberger stuff from a year ago, that’s dead and gone and he’s on his way to getting married this Saturday.  Nothing that major has happened since, but they have still had some stuff pop up that would be better left out of the news.

Rashard Mendenhall made news back in May when he famously tweeted: “What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…”@dkeller23 We’ll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style”

Look, does he have the right to voice his opinion, sure, he does, but should he write controversial comments when they involve 9/11 and Bin Laden, possibly the most hated man in this country and a sure fire sensitive topic? Probably not. He needs to use better judgement.  His comments were offensive to some people, caused major controversy and forced the Steelers to distance themselves from him. Then, Champion dumps him as a sponsor  for his tweet and now he’s in the news for suing them.  He just needs to smarten up and keep some things out of the public eye.  The Steelers don’t like negative attention and as fans, we don’t like it either.

Then, one of our all time Steelers, Hines Ward, gets pulled over in what was thought to be a stolen car while he was in Los Angeles doing Dancing with the Stars. Turns out the car wasn’t stolen, the woman he was with had reported it stolen, found the car and forgot to inform the authorities.  Still, he was out at 3am in this car….not great. 

Furthermore, Hines ward again in the news a few weeks ago, arrested for DUI. DUI is bad news. Thousands of people get arrested every year for DUI, most aren’t celebrities, but all accounts are reprehensible. Hines put himself in a position to injur or kill himself or worse, others. It’s not defendable and we were dissapointed to hear the news when it broke.

Lastly, James Harrison goes off in Mens Journal about commissioner Roger Goodell calling him a “faggot, stupid” and saying he “hated him” and woulnd’t “Piss to put him out” if Goodell were on fire.  Way to get the head honcho of the league watching you James. Do we like Goodell, hell no, he’s arrogant and he truly screwed up this labor dispute, but, again, some things are better left unsaid publicly.

Perhpas worse than going off on Goodell, Harrison blasts Roethlisberger’s play in the Super Bowl and says he needs to stop acting like Peyton Manning and he calls Mendenhall a “fumble machine”.  You can NOT divide your team with comments.  Wether they are or aren’t accurate, blasting teammates is a massive no no and Harrison did it. Supposedly he and Roethlisberger talked and James says the comments were taken out of context but it’s hard to believe. Big Ben says the relationship is “fine” but you never know. 

We just want the lock out to end so the boys can get back on the field and hopefully get this negative energy out of the air. We all know how the Steelers have done the season following a Super Bowl lately and we hope  this isn’t foreshadowing of another rocky Super Bowl hangover season. They need to get it together off the field so they can get it together on.