Looks like Big Ben is one spiteful QB.
Josh Harris accused Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger of intentionally fumbling vs. the Cincinnati Bengals in 2014 after disagreeing with Todd Haley’s play call.
This is the leader of the Steelers.
Check out the tweet below:
2014 week 17 we were playing the bengals. Todd Haley called a run play with very little time left in the game. Ben wanted to kneel. He rolled his eyes in the huddle. He then purposely fumbles the ball. I had to recover it. At that moment I knew what kinda person he was.
— The Bishop (@JoshHarris25) March 10, 2019
It’s basically Harris’ word against Ben’s, and it’s most likely Ben won’t even come close to addressing this.
Then-offensive coordinator Todd Haley isn’t the most well liked guy, so I can totally see Ben doing this as a power move.
Another steeler has weighed in.
During the Monday morning episode of ‘Get Up!’ on ESPN, former Steelers safety Ryan Clark was asked if he thinks the accusation made by Harris last week holds any sort of water. Clark, as you would probably imagine, had quite a bit to say on the topic and especially when it came to his thoughts on Roethlisberger and his ability to be a good team leader.
“Uhhhhhhhhhhh, I think the problem is you don’t really know,” Clark first responded. “The Ben I know, the competitor I think he is, I wouldn’t think he’d do something like that intentionally. He hasn’t done anything for me to think that he couldn’t be that petty, though, and so I honestly, what Josh is saying is not far off from who Ben is. He was extremely close with Brett Kiesel during my time there. And I’ll be honest, I have an affection for Ben that’s different, an admiration for him that’s different, because while he was suspended, he went to watch my son Jordan play like a little league football game. So, I feel differently about Ben and the type of person he is than I think other people do.”
“He’s not a natural leader,” Clark said of Roethlisberger. “Caring about people above himself is not something that comes easy to him. And so it’s something he’s had to work on. We had a players only meeting my first year about Ben. Like the legit reason that the meeting was called was to talk about Ben and the way that he related to the team. And so he had to work on those things. But to say that a guy fumbled the ball intentionally, it’s just hard for me to believe that.”
After mentioning the Steelers team meeting that needed to be called early on in Roethlisberger’s career, Clark was immediately asked to disclose the reason why it was needed.
“It was just that people felt like, guys who were there before me, because obviously it was the first year I was there, felt like the guy he was coming into the league and the way that he behaved in his first two years, changed after they won a Super Bowl, changed after they won a championship,” Clark said. “He distanced himself from the team. He wasn’t a guy who ingratiated himself into the culture of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the people in that locker room. And I think that was something for him that he had to understand. And you know, you talk about Josh Harris speaking about him being close to some of the o-linemen, that was the same thing when I was there. I think the problem is, we feel like all of your best players have to be leaders, but that’s just not how it works.’
Clark was then asked what resulted from that team meeting about Roethlisberger and specifically, what did the rest of the team do after it was over.
“Went to work,” Clark said. “He was in the meeting, he was directly addressed, his name was called. It was the reason we talked and I think it was one of those things where older players, leaders of the team, captains of the team, felt like, because that year after winning the Super Bowl we were 8-8, we started the year with a losing record. And so it was a lot of things going on and they felt like that was one of the huge deals happening on the team.”
The Steelers are an absolute mess.
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