First, it was Antonio Brown piling on Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and now Le'Veon Bell has joined in, talking in an interview with Sports Illustrated about the veteran quarterback's style of leadership.
Bell said that the Roethlisberger wants to win, but he wants to do it his way, and sometimes that includes not throwing to certain receivers. If Roethlisberger were mad at Brown, there would be times he wouldn't look at him, to prove a point and instead throw it to a different receiver.
“The organization wants to win. [Coach Mike] Tomlin wants to win,” Bell said. “Ben wants to win — but Ben wants to win his way, and that's tough to play with. Ben won a Super Bowl, but he won when he was younger. Now he's at this stage where he tries to control everything, and [the team] let him get there. So if I'm mad at a player and I'm not throwing him the ball — if I'm not throwing AB the ball and I'm giving JuJu [Smith-Schuster] all the shine or Jesse [James] or Vance [McDonald] or whoever it is, and you know consciously you're making your other receiver mad but you don't care — it's hard to win that way.”
Bell said that Roethlisberger wasn't the biggest reason why he wanted to leave the Steelers, but it did play a role in it. Bell also felt like he and Roethlisberger never had a true relationship with each other and it's something he wishes that could have happened.
It will be interesting if more players start to pile on Roethlisberger, but it's clear there were some real issues in that locker room.
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