Bill Cowher hasn’t coached the Steelers in over a decade, but he knows what he’d do if he still had that job.
The CBS analyst told Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the drama that emerged late in the season was obviously not the kind of thing that started overnight, and that there was still time to bring all the sides back together.
Wide receiver Antonio Brown walked out on the team the final week of the season, and after initially saying it was unlikely he’d stay with the team, ownership’s position has softened.
“I can only look on the outside. I hear a lot of things,” Cowher said. “It’s not fair of me to comment on things that I don’t understand, what the dynamic was inside the building.
“I do know that whatever it was, it was festering. The reaction that took place was not a one-time situation of a practice. What took place was the [combination] of things that took place that led to that. I think the best thing that can be done at some point is for those three individuals to get into a room, recognize how they got there, recognize where they are and is there any way to move forward?”
Cowher said there was still time to fix what appears to be a broken relationship, saying that he thought the frustration of losing so many close games last year made the pressure build.
“I’m hopeful that at some point, in my opinion, that coach Mike Tomlin, Antonio Brown and Ben Roethlisberger will get in a room, shut the door and air their differences, and talk about where they are and see if there’s any way they can get aligned moving forward,” Cowher said. “Because there’s a window of time here. These are not 24- and 25-year olds. They’ve done too much for that organization to allow this degree of frustration, which I believe it is. I think there needs to be some separation, some time. Unfortunately in this transparent world we’re in with everything else we have in social media, things are said, things are done, things get misinterpreted that sometimes time needs to be the healer of this.
“But at some point they need to get in that room to recognize where they are, recognize how they got there. That’s the thing, How did we get here? Each of us talk about how we got here. How did we play a role in this? More importantly, how can we walk out of this room aligned together because we’ve done too much not to allow something. . . . If it’s not fixable, then understand what needs to happen and move on.”
Brown has already photoshopped pictures of himself in other uniforms, so it seems that might be his preference, but it’s still early enough in the offseason that the meeting Cowher proposes could still happen.
