When Mike McCarthy urged his team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, to play with more emotion against the hostile Dawg Pound, he probably didn’t expect that fire to be directed right back at his coaching staff.
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We saw emotional moments erupt with Aaron Rodgers shouting at McCarthy, and T.J. Watt shouting at Patrick Graham through the headset. Of course, the defensive linemen struggled to stop Deshaun Watson. But the damage was already done as Rodgers and Watt attracted public scrutiny for their on-field emotional moments. However, former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger saw it from a different perspective.
“When you get a guy that wants to start yelling and screaming at the team, whether he’s trying to pick people up, or he wants to yell at coach or whatever, when it doesn’t happen that often, when T.J. Watt grabs that thing, it’s probably like, ‘Okay, something’s going on,’” Roethlisberger said on the Footbahlin podcast. “If he does this every week, you’d be like, ‘Alright, what are we doing?’
“I think the fact that he gets on there, he’s got every right to do it. He’s a leader. He’s a captain. I assume he’s a captain. I think he’s a Hall of Fame guy. He’s making plays. He is a bright spot for this team. He has every right to do it. Because he doesn’t do it often, it’s going to create headway. You see other guys, other captains on the team. They maybe not on the headset, but screaming at guys and yelling, and they highlighted that during the game this week, too.”
The Browns’ offense had already put the Steelers’ defense under pressure in the first half, taking a 21-10 lead. Frustrated by what he was seeing, T.J. Watt picked up a sideline headset and spoke with defensive coordinator Patrick Graham in the booth. The exchange was caught on camera and quickly became a talking point, with questions raised about the Steelers’ composure after their 2-2 start.
However, Roethlisberger emphasized that he doesn’t know what the conversation between Watt and the defensive coordinator was about. But he guaranteed that Watt’s words went to open ears and the higher-ups paid attention to him and others.
And Roethlisberger was right. When asked about the heated sideline interaction at Lincoln Field, Graham told reporters Monday that an emotional game stays with people.
He said, “Just normal football conversation. I’m not going to get into details of it. Again, just talking to me and talking ball, talking football.”
Graham wasn’t really concerned about the shouting aspect of the interaction. Instead, he assured that the team would tackle the conflict and get to a resolution to fix things on the gridiron.
“We’re emotional people. So to me, I encourage the emotions in terms of I want their full selves out there when they’re playing,” Graham said, trying to downplay the interaction with Watt. “How we direct that and funnel it, again, if there was a microphone on me every time or a camera on me every time I’m reacting up there in the box, I’m sure you guys would be wondering what the hell am I talking about.
“I’m not trying to sugarcoat it. I’m not trying to make a bigger deal or lesser deal of what it is, but I know this, we’ve talked about communication a lot and how we communicate to one another, and it’s important that we build these relationships with one another so that when stuff gets said, whether it’s in the heat of the battle, that nobody is sensitive.”
But the Pittsburgh Steelers certainly need to improve themselves. In the previous week’s episode of Footbahlin, Roethlisberger claimed that the Steelers need the offense that they showed in Week 4, and the defense that stood tall in the first two weeks. Well, it’d make the team “almost unbeatable.”
The 27-24 loss against the Cleveland Browns is a lesson that the Steelers can learn from. After all, when a star who rarely loses his cool shouts at the coaching staff, they have no choice but to heed his calls. Now, we need to see if the Steelers bring in any change for the Week 5 battle against the Indianapolis Colts.