Cleveland Browns: Sharing the Basement with Pittsburgh

The Cleveland Browns’ insanity may be rubbing off on the Pittsburgh Steelers, judging by their recent escapades with star players Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown.

Although the Cleveland Browns have plenty of problems of their own to worry about, for once the Pittsburgh Steelers seem to be in the same boat, fighting amongst themselves and seeing their star players get mad at the team.

Amazingly enough, on the same day that Josh Gordon was traded for being late to work and having a muscle injury, Antonio Brown did not even show up at the Steelers’ practice facility — he didn’t make it on Tuesday either, though he finally appeared on Wednesday. In addition, Brown has been saying stupid things on Twitter recently — for instance, “Trade me” in jest, responding to stupid Steeler fans questioning his ability.

There are some rumors out of Pittsburgh that Brown may never have completely healed from a torn quad muscle, injured late in 2017. There might be some support for this in the stats.

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Although Ben Roethlisberger has been his usual big self in the early going, Ju Ju Smith-Schuster is the top wide receiver with 240 yards versus only 160 for Brown. At age 30, the game may be getting harder for him than it was a few years ago. In any case, he does not seem to be a happy camper, and the press is now questioning whether Coach Mike Tomlin has lost control of his team.

Clearly, it has been a terrible week for Antonio Brown, but things have not reached the point of deciding to trade him to Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, as the Browns did with Gordon. The Steelers are keeping him on the team as they seek to evaluate his injury situation and resolve his attendance problems.

The situation with Le’Veon Bell is even worse. Of course, taking ownership’s side in a salary dispute is a total breach of the player’s ethics, but that is exactly what the players are doing. Specifically, Steelers O-linemen David DeCastro, Ramon Foster (who is also the players’ rep, which makes it even funnier) and Maurkice Pouncey have taken turns blasting him to the press.

It’s all the more laughable because Bell and his agent are probably doing the right thing. Here’s why:  Conventional wisdom is that Bell has no choice but to accept the Steeler’s franchise tender, which is $14.5 million dollars, minus the paychecks he has missed to date. But if he gets injured or has a bad year, he risks not having big paydays in 2019 and beyond. It might be that $14.5 million is all he will ever get.

On the other hand, if he has the discipline to sit out an entire year, he will likely get a multi-year contract with much more than $14.6 guaranteed. By comparison, David Johnson gets $24.7 million guaranteed and $39 million dollars total over three years, and Bell is probably worth more than Johnson.

Clearly, it makes sense to avoid the risk of blowing that maximum payday for the good-not-great offer from the franchise tag system. Hence the holdout might go on for a very long time (like the entire season), and the Steelers are not taking it well. Fans are demanding that Coach Tomlin be fired (our Coach Jackson can offer advice on coping with that issue, no doubt).

It’s too early to say that the Steelers are headed for a Browns-like losing season, despite their titanic struggles in the early going. The tie between the Browns and Steelers did not go over well in Cleveland, where many fans felt that the Browns should have won that game. But in Pittsburgh, there was much gnashing of teeth and shedding of tears.  It came as a terrible shock that the Steelers could not outscore the Browns.  The uproar did not diminish when the Steelers were bombarded by Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.

There is still a lot of talent on a team that featured eight Pro Bowlers last year, including Roethlisberger, Brown, and Bell as well as O-linemen Pouncy, DeCastro and Alejandro Villanueva. Also, the Steelers have gotten strong performances from James Conner, Bell’s replacement, who has 152 yards on the ground and another 105 receiving yards, plus Smith-Schuster taking up the slack from Antonio Browns’ drop-off.  Tight end Jesse James is also off to a good start with 198 receiving yards in 2018.

The defense, of course, is operating without Ryan Shazier and also Joe Haden went out of the Browns game and hasn’t made it back yet.  That might be part of the reason that Mahomes hung 6 TDs on them last week.

Let’s just enjoy the dysfunction while it lasts, shall we?