Ravens All-Pro CB Sensed Problems in Steelers’ Locker Room
Pittsburgh Steelers teams have collapsed in recent years, but the kind of slide in 2024 to end the season was very rare. It was only the second time in Mike Tomlin’s career that the Steelers lost five straight games.
Tomlin doesn’t usually let things go completely off the rails, but the team looked lost at the end of the season. Baltimore Ravens All-Pro cornerback Marlon Humphrey revealed on his podcast earlier this week that he sensed internal issues in the Steelers’ locker room.
“The team, to me, if you look just based off of what I very teeny bit know and based off what I feel like I’ve seen/how it is, I feel like there’s an underlying thing there somewhere internally that reminds me kind of the Jets’ current situation,” Humphrey said on his Punch Line podcast.
“Sometimes when I see quotes from Jets players, it seems like they’re trying to speak in code and there’s something that they wanna say that they can’t just say. There’s a couple times I read Jets quotes from certain players and it’s like, no one just wants to dog somebody, or you can’t really tell the media exactly what’s going on. But it seems like how [the Steelers] kind of played in that game against us, it’s like … And I know something that I ain’t gonna say.”
Humphrey was teammates with DeShon Elliott and Patrick Queen in Baltimore, so perhaps someone told him some inner details that contributed to the Steelers’ season-ending collapse.
Kirk Herbstreit ripped Pittsburgh’s first-half effort in last Saturday night’s Wild Card game loss to the Ravens. At times, it looked like multiple Steelers players didn’t even want to be there.
“Where the hell is the fight?! This is the Pittsburgh Steelers! There’s nothing! They’re just going through the motions!” Herbstreit said during the Amazon Prime broadcast.
Midway through the third quarter, the Ravens had 242 yards rushing, which is the most rushing yards allowed by Pittsburgh in a postseason game. The previous high was 232 yards at Oakland in 1973. Baltimore finished with 299 yards rushing (6.0 average).
With the Steelers losing their final five games of the season and getting embarrassed in the Wild Card game by the Ravens, former Steelers head coach Bill Cowher thinks there needs to be major changes on the coaching staff and roster.
“Probably need some changes on that football team, players, coaches,” Cowher said on the CBS pregame show. “Right now, that’s going to stick with them for a long time. It’s not that they lost. It’s the manner in what they lost.”
This game was total domination by the Baltimore Ravens. One of the drives was 13 plays, and they were all runs. They ran the ball for (299) yards. That is winning at the line of scrimmage. That is imposing your will on a football team,” Cowher said. “And I’ll tell you, that is something you have to sit with now this whole offseason. So that was a complete domination, a big disappointment for the Pittsburgh Steelers showing up how they did.”
Cowher wasn’t the only Steelers legend to rip the current team. Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw also put the Steelers on blast.
“I can’t get over the game last night when you saw the Baltimore Ravens beat the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers now have lost five straight games. I mean, that’s just unheard of,” Bradshaw said on FOX NFL Sunday. “The defense was just horrible, they couldn’t stop the run, couldn’t stop the pass. They couldn’t do anything right last night. This just doesn’t look anything like the Steelers teams we’ve seen.”