Steelers Players Vent Frustrations in Meeting

PITTSBURGH — The Steelers players have blamed themselves, not the coaching staff, for the offense’s struggles so far this season. Running back Najee Harris gave a passionate defense of offensive coordinator Matt Canada on Wednesday. Harris called a player’s meeting on Monday to review the group’s struggles and vent them out.

“We’ve got to execute the plays,” Harris said. “We’re not trying to point the finger at all. This is not the time to do that. It keeps being a conversation to be brought up, or not even brought up, but things that are talked about so much. It’s crazy. We have to execute at the end of the day, no matter who is back there calling the plays. I honestly say that we’re not doing that right now — not coaches. It has nothing to do with coaches. It’s just players. We have to play better.”

Wide receiver Calvin Austin III shed some light on the feelings around the meeting. The entire process of the meeting was to get on the same page. Each group reviewed the film from the loss, critiqued each other’s effort and execution, and tried to hold each other accountable. Pittsburgh’s players did not feel like they were communicating well, and that was a critical issue to their struggles through the first four games.

“I wouldn’t say players only, but definitely some players that voiced how they’ve been feeling,” Austin said. “I think we’ve been on the same page, but we just got even more on the same page and in tune with each other. Yeah, it just went right back to when we looked at film, each person looking at themselves. We’re not pointing fingers at different positions. It was just each person looking at it l would have strained more for this block, we could’ve had a big play that would have changed the dynamic of the game. Forget all the talking about this and that, let’s just focus on ourselves.”

The noise from media and the fans reached a crescendo on Tuesday when the sum of head coach Mike Tomlin’s promised changes amounted to wearing pads in practice on Wednesday and not a change in the person or the method that the team selects its offensive plays. To that end, Harris said there was a players’ meeting earlier this week, as he and other leaders tried to get the team on the same page and eliminate the sloppy play from Sunday.

“We all had a talk as a team to kind of get that conversation going,” Harris said. “Me as a person who wants to spark the offense. Sometimes, I don’t like saying it. I like showing it. I try to be that guy that can show it. That’s why in the game, we came out there, and I just went to emphasize that right now we’re just playing soft.”

Pittsburgh now hopes that the meeting can showcase itself into an on-field turnaround heading into their rivalry game against the Ravens. Following that, they will have a bye week to go deeper into things. But it’s a critical AFC North matchup, and Pittsburgh hopes to head into the bye week as the leader of the division.