Two Pittsburgh Steelers land on NFL’s most hated players list
It’s no secret the Pittsburgh Steelers are not the most well liked team in football.
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Whether it’s Ben Roethlisberger’s off-the-field issues that still follow him nearly ten years later, or Antonio Brown’s dancing that get opposing fans rattled, Pittsburgh always seems to find a reason for others to dislike them.
Well, in a list conducted by Sporting News, listing the 20 most hated players in the league, Pittsburgh was awarded two spots.
No. 11 James Harrison certainly isn’t disliked for his insane weight lifting, but more for his choice of words towards some of the NFL’s higher ups, especially Roger Goodell.
"He twice skipped the Steelers’ post-Super Bowl visit to the White House. He called commissioner Roger Goodell “a crook and a puppet” in a 2011 interview with Men’s Journal. “If that man was on fire and I had to piss to put him out,” Harrison said, “I wouldn’t do it.” When the NFL wanted to interview him about an Al Jazeera report that briefly mentioned him along with four other players as being associated with PEDs — that source of the piece later retracted his claims — Harrison reiterated the assertion that Goodell is a “a crook.”"
It’s no secret Harrison and Goodell have a feud revolving around Harrison’s abundance of “random” drug tests. Although much of the NFL doesn’t agree with Harrison’s hatred towards, as a Steelers fan, it’s easy to see why the all-time Pittsburgh sack leader has trouble finding the good in the NFL commissioner.
The next Steeler to make the list seemed a bit high considering it’s been almost ten years since all the off-the-field issues arose. Ben Roethlisberger ranked number four as the highest and most hated Steeler in the NFL.
"Of all the players on this list, Roethlisberger is here as much for his off-field behavior as anyone. He has spent the past half-dozen years rebuilding his image locally: He got married, fathered a couple kids and has talked about the growing importance of religion in his life. But the internet has a long memory, and the incident that occurred in Georgia during the 2010 offseason, in which he was accused of sexual assault but never charged, lingers, especially when he also was subject of a civil suit filed against him by a Nevada hotel employee who claimed he assaulted her in 2008; the case was settled in 2012."
At the time, it’s easy to see why everyone had a hard time with Big Ben. But since 2008, he’s never fully been convicted of all sexual assault and has since been very quiet off the field. Not that being accused with sexual assault is justifiable and if it really did happen then there’s reason to see why people have such a hard time with him.
Fortunately, though, the quarterback was never charged and he’s an innocent man. For some reason, though, this will never be behind Ben. Even if people can forgive Michael Vick for his involvement with dog fighting or Ray Lewis for being accused of murder, there will always be people out there who find it hard to look past Big Ben’s incidents.
Honestly, it’s more surprising that more Steelers didn’t make the list than these two actually being on it. No one likes people who speak their opinion, or win, and Harrison and Ben have done both.
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Sorry NFL, you can hate these guys all you want, they’re still two of the best players the game has to offer.