Count wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster among those who are fed up with the drama on the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“I think everyone has to stop being divas. I think we need to stop being the Kardashians and just play ball,” said the Steelers wide out on ESPN First Take on Thursday.
While Smith-Schuster did not directly answer the question of who exactly he was referring to, he said he would never want to be that type of distraction during his NFL career:
“Being in that locker room, I've learned a lot,” he said. “I know that I would never want to be a problem to any franchise.”
This marks the second time that a Steelers player has likened the team's locker room to the “Kardashians.”
Back in late December, tight end Jesse James had the same comparison:
“Ah man, we are — Kardashians,” Jamestold Jacob Klinger of PennLive.com on Dec. 31. “We have, I mean, we're something. It's Le'Veon Bell issues, you have more stuff popping up weekly, Jeremy Fowler's reporting stuff about Le'Veon every other week. There's just people calling people out. We were in the front of the ticker on ESPN too much for just reasons that weren't related to football and not for us playing great ball. It was more distractions.”
The Steelers' season began with running back Le'Veon Bell holding out for the second straight year. This time, however, Bell decided to sit out the entire campaign.
Then, in the week leading up to the season finale, Antonio Brown got into a heated dispute with Ben Roethlisberger and then proceeded to go AWOL on the team, resulting in his Week 17 benching against the Cincinnati Bengals.