Pittsburgh Steelers running back, Le’Veon Bell, is set to make his regular season debut in London, England on Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings.  As Josh Alper of NBCSports tells us, the most important man on the field for the Steelers, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, has zero faith in his RB.

Roethlisberger had this to say of Bell:

Honestly, I have no idea with him.  You can’t get a read on him. One day, he’s practicing, one day, he’s not; one day, he’s going hard, the next day, he’s not. I wish I could. If he was a guy like Heath Miller that you knew was busting his butt every day to get back there … Le’Veon is a rookie, I don’t know him quite well enough yet. But if he can come back and help us, we’ll take him.

The Steelers are 0-3 and Big Ben has not played particularly well, so one could argue that he should be “pumping up” Bell publicly in the hopes he can get something out of him on Sunday, not openly questioning his work ethic. 

Publicly humiliating your new starting rookie RB does nothing but create dissension and animosity.  Roethlisberger should keep his comments like this strictly for the locker room or maybe he has and he felt this was his only way of motivating his RB.  Conversely, Roethlisberger could have just given his honest assessment of how he sees things.

For whatever reason Roethlisberger made his comments, his timing and medium in which he used to voice his concerns was ill advised. 

The Steelers are trying to repair a season that has been fraught with losses on the scoreboard and in the locker room and the timing and manner of Roethlisberger’s comments hurts the whole team because at this point the Steelers need all the help they can get.

The Steelers do not need their rookie RB starting his first regular season game (in London) thinking his Super Bowl winning quarterback has no confidence in his ability or work ethic. 

For the Steelers, let us hope Bell uses this as a motivating force to perform in the looming presence of both Big Bens.


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