The Pittsburgh Steelers have been engulfed in drama as long as anybody can remember at this point. The Antonio Brown saga was the dominating storyline of the NFL offseason, and the Steelers are just looking to put it behind them at some point. For the first time since Brown's trade to the Raiders went down, Ben Roethlisberger spoke to the media about it Tuesday following an OTA practice.

Roethlisberger accepted some responsibility and apologized to Brown for remarks he made to the media last season that may have offended his former receiver, per Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com.

Roethlisberger explained that he was never able to talk to Brown about what was bothering him, even though he reached out several times.

“It was hard to process it, because I never knew anything. Last time we spoke was on Thursday before the last game. We hugged. We had a great talk. Everything was good. I knew nothing. So, it was hard for me to know anything. Then I heard from a third party there were issues. I reached out to him many times, sent him texts, sent him calls — this is all before the season was over. Never heard back. So I could never really find out what was going on,” Roethlisberger declared.

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Big Ben said he was blindsided by Brown's unhappiness, and said he's just focusing now on being a better leader with the guys still in the locker room. Roethlisberger also accepted a lot of the blame for the team missing the playoffs last season.

“I lacked in leadership,” Roethlisberger said Tuesday. “Because that's my job as the leader of this team, to get us to the playoffs. I'm gonna need to focus and refocus my energy and time on, how can I be a better leader to get us back to the playoffs.”

The Steelers were finally able to beat the Patriots last year, but they collapsed in the final month of the season. They finished 9-6-1 and narrowly lost the division to the Ravens.