This week, Diontae Johnson faced criticism for not supporting his teammates after Jaylen Warren mishandled the ball during the Pittsburgh Steelers’ victory over the Cincinnati Bengals. The wide receiver and Minkah Fitzpatrick had previously gotten into a fight in the locker room.
Wide receiver Diontae Johnson of the Pittsburgh Steelers apologised to teammates this week after leaving a play against the Cincinnati Bengals. Phoebe Schecter, a former coach of the Buffalo Bills, provides her opinion on the incident in her most recent column, which takes us inside an NFL locker room.
You need to be aware right away that everyone will see that when they see the movie the following week, particularly with regard to that interception, so you need to take a strong stance against it.
You can’t let behaviour like that go away, and I’ve been a part of teams that have had a toxic player where it kind of seeps in, and if you allow that you teach it and say that behaviour is okay and then others start to lose respect. So you can very easily lose the locker room based off of not addressing something like that.
We have seen it for a few weeks in Pittsburgh, where there has already been a few disgruntled moments from players and confrontations within the Steelers locker room, and Diontae Johnson was involved in one of them before Sunday. You can tell something was perhaps boiling over, but if you have a veteran quitting on a play like that, they are quitting on other areas of their job too.
What do they look like when they are at walkthroughs? What is their effort in film study and in the classroom? Or have they given up there too
I get it in terms of that it’s a run play and he’s not going to get involved, he’s not trying to sell anything in the passing game, but you should never behave that way. There is the turnover and they are literally past you.
The bigger issue is that every player has a role to play in their team, because ultimately if one person does not do their job that could be the equivalent of not being able to feed your family, right? That’s how players think when you are in that building.
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