Welcome to DK Sports Radio and a new Daily Shot of Steelers, my every-weekday, half-hour program on the local football franchise. Today's episode: Antonio Brown, Le'Veon Bell and what really could've been.
Also, hey, just below, you'll find a full transcript of the opening segment:
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TRANSCRIPT
I feel like, if you want me to be honest here, I should have some really strong emotion about Antonio Brown and/or Le'Veon Bell participating in the Super Bowl this week. I feel like it's my duty as a Pittsburgher to have strong emotion about that. And I just really don't.
Within the past 48 hours, both AB and Lev had their Super Bowl media sessions down in Tampa. And as you'd expect, there were some Pittsburgh reporters on those calls. Dale Lolley from DK Pittsburgh Sports was on both of those for us. And there were some Pittsburgh -elated questions asked of them. Neither of them really surprised, nor really jumped out the way maybe some might have expected. AB sounded peculiarly mature. I didn't recognize him at times, except if I were recalling what AB used to be like here when he first arrived with the Steelers. So that was nice. Lev struck all the right notes. But then, you know, he's always done that. I can't remember an occasion in which Lev put his foot in his mouth anytime he was actually facing cameras and microphones. The only times he would do that is when he'd be away from actual media, and he would go to social and then just vomit out something ridiculous. And then, of course, end up having to spend the next week or so explaining why he said that and trying to deny that he ever said it.
But emotion? Emotion about them being in the Super Bowl?
Come Sunday night, one of them will be a Super Bowl champion, and I'm sorry, I ... well ... hang on a second ... maybe there is something here.
You want to know what my emotion is about these two extraordinary athletes, extraordinary performers during their peak years in Pittsburgh? Being in the Super Bowl on opposite sides with one of them guaranteed to be finally wearing a ring?
It really wouldn't be as much about either of them, as much it would be the blown opportunity that the Steelers had and that the Steelers' odd convergences of great offense and great defense, along with related misfires or misconnections that led to that. That would be it.
AB put on one of the great football performances I've ever laid eyes on in any setting with how he decimated the New Orleans defense down there in the Superdome in 2018. I covered that game. The atmosphere was unbelievable. I mean, it's like that for every Saints game. And that Saints team was legit great. And Ben Roethlisberger and AB had something that New Orleans had no answer for, which is a rare rare sight in sports. That, to me was peak AB. I mean, you could look at different moments from a big time in Pittsburgh, notably the jutting of the football over the goal line to beat the Ravens at Heinz Field for the division. But as far as an overall virtuoso, he did everything that day down there. Short, deep, intermediate, running the ball, whatever it was, he did everything. I'm convinced I won't see another receiving performance like it.
That wasn't so long ago. You know, that that was three years ago. Crazy, right?
Lev, we saw him do things in a Pittsburgh uniform that we'd never seen from a running back here. That's not to say he's the greatest running back the Steelers ever had. I'm talking about his style. I'm talking about the whole delay thing, the Eddie George thing, waiting for his hole and then hitting it and then just kind of slicing through and falling forward. Next thing you know, it's a 6-yard gain when it looked like nothing. I'm talking about him coming out of the backfield. I'm talking about everything he did to torture the Cincinnati Bengals here and there. I'm talking about how he actually played his best football, tough football, hard-nosed football inside the AFC North. It's something he and I used to talk about a lot after games. And he was proud of that. Not for social media purposes, not for anything else. He was proud of that. This was a great football player. While he was in Pittsburgh.
You want to start getting my emotion on this ... here, I'll go with you, I can do that. But it doesn't have anything to do with them being in the Super Bowl. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that one of them is going to have confetti falling on his head on Sunday night. It has to do with this: That should have happened here. They were great players here. They were great players on a great offense with a generational quarterback. And an experienced offensive line here. Why didn't it? Why didn't it?
I suppose the lazy version, at least in my eyes is to say, well, the the two of them just, you know, they were losers. They didn't care as much about football as they did about ... I don't know, throwing TV sets out of buildings or all that other stuff that I don't really feel like regurgitating. Not to downplay it. It was real. Some of it was horrible in AB's case. But that's not why those teams lost. I mean, I know that's convenient. Everyone loves narratives. Everyone loves narrative-based crap when it comes to this football team. But when I look at those teams, and then I look at the teams that followed their departure from Pittsburgh, what we saw was a great offense, and a team that had virtually no past defense. And really, against Jacksonville, no run defense, either. And then after that, all of a sudden, the Steelers had the greatest defense you've ever seen. And then the offense completely fell apart.
How did that happen? Why did that happen?
I know that's really broad. And I know that's not narrative-based. But if the Steelers come up with a responsible, fact-based answer for how and why such a thing occurred, they'll probably have a better idea of how to handle it ... oh, you know, maybe like right now when that imbalance still very much exists.
Have they, over the past decade and change, put too many eggs on one side of the football?
I know that's a really mangled metaphor, but, you know, roll with it. Have they done that? When you talk about this defense that exists right now, do you say to yourself, how did they ever get that? No, you don't wonder about it at all. You look at the first round picks. Count the elite talent that's on that side of the ball. Minkah Fitzpatrick counts as a first-round pick, by the way, because that's what they gave up to get him. So that's another first-round pick. They're all over the place. And then you go to the other side of the ball. And it's all these stories about oh, you know, some undrafted free agent, he made it and they developed him into this and, and whatever. The wide receivers have been high draft picks. The quarterback was a high draft pick 18 years ago. The running back, meaning James Conner, was a third round pick. You know, maybe they need to balance these things out a little bit better.
It's tempting, believe me. I'm speaking to you as someone who would love to see more than anything else, this offseason, the entire defense brought back. So I'm gonna sound to some extent like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth because I want Mike Hilton back. I want Cam Sutton back. And I'd rather have either of those two than JuJu Smith-Schuster. Why? Well, mostly because I think they're better football players. But also because I love the idea of having a truly great defense. I think it makes a difference to have something that's special on your team. The Steelers have that with this defense, and it's going to be painful to let that go.
But there has to be a balance. There has to be a balance.
What really went wrong with AB and Lev for the Steelers wasn't that they were Looney Tunes or whatever. The Steelers couldn't stop anybody. They didn't have the defense.
I know. I know. That's not that's not the most fascinating script, you know, hot takery or whatever. But it's the truth. And it's just too important to understand why it happened.