It's been rumored that Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Martavis Bryant requested to be traded given his lack of involvement in the Steelers' passing game this season. However, the third-year player out of Clemson shot that claim down earlier this week.
Fans could still be skeptical about this issue given that the denial of the rumor came from Bryant himself. But, shortly after Bryant's remarks, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger also reinforced the notion that one of his best receiving targets has no plans of leaving Steel City.
This week, Roethlisberger spoke to 93.7 The Fan (via Sean Gentille of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) and had this to say about Bryant's situation:
“Martavis, I talked to him, he doesn’t want to go anywhere… Sometimes things come from agents because they want what they think is best for the player and don’t realize that it ends up hurting the player. I don’t know exactly what happened here, but I do know that Martavis, there hasn’t been any inklings of unhappiness. It’s unnecessary drama.”
There are several factors that can be attributed to Bryant's decline in production this season; star players Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell are still getting the lion's share of the workload on offense, rookie wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster is receiving a decent amount of snaps to test his potential, and opposing defenses are keying more on the 25-year-old making his comeback from a season-long suspension in 2016.
That being said, it would be best for Bryant to put more faith into his team and block out all the noise about his rumored discontent. He and Roethlisberger have shown in the past that they can connect time and again for some huge numbers, and there are still 10 games left on the schedule to prove the naysayers wrong.
In his first two years as a Steeler, Bryant racked up 76 catches, 1,314 yards, and 14 touchdowns in just 21 regular-season games. However, he only has 17 receptions for 231 yards and a single TD after six games this season.
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