PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh Steelers guard Kevin Dotson will be the first to tell you that there are things he needs to clean up from his on-field performance against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Dotson was flagged for thee penalties — two holding, one false start. He was late onto the field for a field goal. And perhaps most impactfully, he missed his block on Bucs blitzing linebacker Devin White in the third quarter, allowing a sack and the hit that gave quarterback Kenny Pickett a concussion.
The third-year pro is used to hearing about it when he has a bad game, saying Monday that it’s something all offensive linemen deal with. They only get noticed when something goes wrong.
But Sunday, Dotson said, things crossed a different line. When he logged onto social media in the aftermath of the Steelers’ upset win over the Bucs, Dotson found not just the typical amount of hate, but death threats.
Dotson said he reported those threats on Twitter, but doesn’t think anything will come of them. He’s trying to move on from the incident.
“At the end of the day, they’ve never done what I’ve done,” Dotson said. “They’ll never be able to do it. I try not to come at them as fans, because I’ve been a fan my whole life, but I’eve never felt like I had the right to tell somebody they should die. Like, that’s just wild.
“And then people will come behind them and say, ‘Oh yeah, it was bad that they gave you death threats, but we’re fans.’ You can feel what you want to feel, but to say you can call for and give someone a death threat, it’s just wow.”
Dotson isn’t letting the unwarranted messages keep him from taking responsibility for his work, though. He knows he needs to be better.
“I messed up,” Dotson said. “I had a bad day with the penalties. Overall, I had a good game. If you can only see the negative, what’s the point of me caring what you think?”
Dotson said he also apologized to Pickett for the hit that he took.
“I gave up a sack,” Dotson said. “I can’t deny that. I won’t deny that. It just so happened that something happened afterwards. I told him sorry and stuff like that. He forgave me, so I don’t really care what anybody else thinks.”
