While everyone is quick to throw Antonio Brown under the proverbial bus, Pittsburgh Steelers legend Jerome Bettis sees things a little differently.
Bettis took some time to talk to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the Brown saga, and he feels that it's not just the players' fault that Brown has thrown an epic temper tantrum that's still going on, months after the fact.
“I don’t think that’s fair to him. Look at it from his perspective. ‘You’re blaming me, but you allowed me to do that. Now, all of a sudden, you’re saying I’m the bad guy. No, you allowed me to do this. I took the rope that you allowed me. How can you blame me for that?’ ”
Bettis said that, while Brown needs to come in for his share of the blame (since, after all, he could have handled things a lot better than he did), Mike Tomlin has to come in for his share of the dragging, too.
“This goes all the way to the top. Ownership deserves blame. The coaches deserve blame. The players deserve blame. Everyone deserves blame for allowing the culture to exist. Coach Tomlin came in and said, ‘I’m going to let these men self-check themselves because that’s what these guys should be able to do.’ Well, guess what? When you had multiple leaders on the team, it was effective. But as those leaders start diminishing, you didn’t have those strong leaders to take their place. Ben is the only guy who is there as a leader. Where is all of the defensive leadership? All of those guys are gone. It’s younger players now. It didn’t happen overnight. It’s not hard to see.”
It should be interesting to see how much longer the Brown saga plays out, and if Bettis will have anything else to say about it.
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