Joey Porter is the latest to question Ben Roethlisberger's leadership

Senior writer

Sat, May 25, 2019, 7:02 PM

At some point, we’ll run out of former Pittsburgh Steelers who want to criticize quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s leadership.

We’re not to the end of the line yet.

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Joey Porter played with Roethlisberger, then was on the Steelers’ coaching staff for a while after he played. He was asked about Roethlisberger, as seemingly everyone has this offseason, and he offered his opinion.

It was a familiar one.

Joey Porter takes aim at Ben Roethlisberger

Porter, who played linebacker with the Steelers from 1999-2006 and won Super Bowl XL with Roethlisberger, was asked what he thought of Roethlisberger as a leader.

“It’s clear he has the power, and how he uses it? He uses it for him,” Porter said on NFL Network, via the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “You want your locker room to love you.”

Roethlisberger’s relationship with Antonio Brown, particularly after the quarterback criticized him on a radio show after a loss at Denver, has been at the heart of this offseason narrative. Roethlisberger has apologized to Brown, but Porter said it was too late.

“Once you have a bad situation, they’re not going to pick up the phone,” Porter told NFL Network about Roethlisberger’s relationship with Brown, via the Tribune-Review. “If you feel slighted by any teammate – friends, teammates – once you feel like you’ve been betrayed in any type of way, I’m not picking up your phone call. You can’t call me and say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry’ the next day. I need you to be sorry when you did it. You can’t be sorry that late, so those relationships went the other way.

“Now that he’s being a man and apologizing now, it’s a couple days too late. All of that probably could’ve been avoided if he was coming to them and saying, ‘I didn’t handle that the right way.’ But that’s the way he chose to go about it. He’s apologizing now and it’s a little bit too late.”

Roethlisberger will be under more pressure

Roethlisberger isn’t exactly going anywhere. Brown was traded to the Oakland Raiders, and Roethlisberger signed an extension that makes him one of the highest-paid players in NFL history. It’s clear where the Steelers’ organization falls on this issue.

Roethlisberger will be under more pressure this season. Brown is gone. So is Le’Veon Bell. It’s unquestionably Roethlisberger’s team now. And Roethlisberger has had plenty of people question him, and his role in the Steelers’ never-ending drama.

As long as there are more ex-Steelers hanging around, we likely haven’t heard the end of it either.