STEELERS

Two players piped up, I was told, and in a powerful way. 

Not the typical two, either.

"Not necessarily the guys you'd expect to be doing that," Connor Heyward would tell me. "But that's OK. It's good, sometimes, to hear different voices when things aren't going well."

Things weren't going well for the Steelers as of Saturday night, when Mike Tomlin held his standard team meeting at a local hotel. They'd been embarrassed, bordering on emasculation, in their previous two losses to the Bengals and Packers. They'd been eviscerated, especially, on defense.

And in the starkest of contrasts, as of late Sunday afternoon, they'd just cut down the NFL's No. 1 team, the Colts, by a 27-20 count at Acrisure Stadium, and it was the defense that'd whip up six takeaways.

So, what was spoken? And who spoke it?

One was Jonnu Smith, I'd learn, and the other was ... Jalen? Jaylen? I couldn't quite make it out.

I approached Jaylen Warren, probably the quietest man alive, and asked somewhat sheepishly if he'd given some speech to the team.

"Speech?" he'd reply with a laugh. "If I ever have to give a speech, they'll get two words."

I didn't ask which two.

____________________

The other speaker was Jalen Ramsey, I'd soon have clarified, and that made way more sense.

Both are new to the Steelers for 2025, and both, in fact, arrived in the Minkah Fitzpatrick trade this summer. And both, at the time, had assured Tomlin and everyone in the team's orbit that they were all-in, feeling this might be a final stop on their NFL tour, feeling the roster around them was ready to go for it.

That, as multiple players confirmed for me through their recollections, was part of the message.

Not least of whom was Smith himself.

"I'm enjoying myself," he'd tell me at his stall, looking around and motioning toward fellow tight end Pat Freiermuth to his right. "I'm a part of a great group of guys. We've got a solid group of individuals. There are some really good men I'm surrounded by in this locker room. I had the opportunity to speak in front of the guys and the message was just simply continue to treat every snap like it's your last. We aren't perfect. If you could, go out there and say, 'I'm going to lay it out on the line each snap at a time.' Because we don't know if that next snap is coming. It's never guaranteed. But you can go to sleep at night comfortably, with peace, saying, 'I gave it all I got.' That was just the message."

Love it.

Want more?

Ramsey had left the locker room well before I found out any of this, but Heyward would tell me of Ramsey's words: "He was basically just telling us, 'Let's get this s--- to start clicking right now. It's just going to take us one game. Play with that swagger and that confidence. When you have that, it'll carry onto the field. Don't be thinking, 'Who's gonna make the play?' Be like, 'I'm gonna make the play.'' I feel like we all wanna make the play, but sometimes we can be more dominant out there."

Another emphasis from Ramsey, per Heyward, was to operate with trust: "Everybody just needs to win their one-on-ones, mano a mano. If you make a mistake, you've got guys who are going to cover you up."

Yet another, as Troy Fautanu would tell me: "We were reminded of what it means to be Steelers. Who we've got to be. What this organization's all about. And I feel like we came out here with some energy, and it carried over out onto the field."

Several players told me that part of the novelty of the event, beyond hearing from more than Tomlin, was hearing from other faces on the team.

"That was his first time, I feel like, talking to the whole team," Heyward would say of Ramsey. "He's probably talked to the defense, but he had the floor and had everybody's attention. Just telling us we have a team that can go all the way, but we can't just be talking about it."

All the way?

____________________

Listen, it's already been an autumn of extremes. I'm not about to add to it.

The Steelers were flying at least semi-high at 4-1, accompanied by an equally welcome undercurrent of progress in all phases, then spectacularly bottomed out on a single Thursday night against the brutal Bengals, only to be beaten down further in what was supposed to be the most pivotal phase, the defense, by the Packers.

So now, to take down the NFL's No. 1 team, to turn the truly great Jonathan Taylor into just another dude at 14 carries for 45 yards, to transform Daniel Jones back into his New Jersey self with 19 incompletions, five sacks and three interceptions, to get Shane Steichen, lauded offensive genius to acknowledge of the Steelers tweaking their defensive scheme, "They did a few little things, so credit to them" ... well, yeah, awesome.

So was the physicality, beginning with an early hit from -- who else? -- Ramsey:

So was everything about Payton Wilson, who's been mind-blowing the past two weeks:

So was seeing the real T.J. Watt again:

So was seeing more Nick Herbig:

But sorry, there's gonna need to be a bunch more before it means much.

In other words, it's great to know it's there when awoken, while also being fair to wonder why that was needed on this day or, for that matter, on the eve of the game.

We can agree on that, right?

OK, so I further feel it's fair to wonder if, in a weird way, this entire event might've been made possible by the Cincinnati and Green Bay games. Meaning that there'd never otherwise have been cause for such soul-searching or scheme-revising and else.

I put it to Patrick Queen, and he'd reply, "It's all part of the journey. It's what you learn, what you take from it, how you apply it."

I put it to Fautanu, too:

"You know ... I don't know," he'd reply. "Because the conversations were a little different this week coming off those two losses. It's just a reminder that we're here to have fun but also to represent something bigger than ourselves, and that's the name across our chests, playing like the guys before us."

Some of whom were on hand, it's worth adding, amid a Super Bowl XL reunion:

CHRIS HALICKE / DKPS

"Honestly," Fautanu would continue, "I don't know if all this would've happened if we hadn't dropped those two. But we've got to keep it going."

That might've been the only real lesson to cull from this. Pack it up for Los Angeles, whatever it was, whatever it took, and keep the figurative line moving.