With the holiday season now upon us, here are four players that are currently on the Steelers naughty list this year.
The Steelers have found a mix of success and extreme failures this season, and as a result, there are some players that have earned the eyre of the team. While summing up all of the teams’ failures on an individual isn’t fair, these players have been key contributors to the losses that have occurred.
Here are the four Steelers that are on the team’s naughty list this holiday season.
Steelers Isaiah Buggs
The loss of Tyson Alualu was a key turning point of the Steelers’ defensive line going from a deep and talented group to one that is struggling to field competitive starters. Carlos Davis was slated to take on the starter role until he too was injured for an extended period of time. This left Isaiah Buggs as the only option to fill in as a nose tackle.
He wasn’t all bad at first, but inconsistencies and struggles with his overall game quickly made him a weak link on this defense. His steady decline in play also coincided with the team struggling to stop the run as a whole. He has since been benched and has been inactive over the past few weeks.
This has led to players like Henry Mondeaux seeing far too many snaps at nose tackle and has kept this run defense down. With Davis healed up and Montavious Adams playing well, Buggs’ time as a starter should be up. He can’t seem to hold his own as a reserve, and the team has to be looking elsewhere at this point as he can’t continue to start.
Steelers Kendrick Green
There was a lot of intrigue when the Steelers selected Kendrick Green in the third round of the draft. He was a nasty, physical, and athletic run blocker in college, and with the center job wide open in the offseason, it looked like Green was hand-picked to take over. Unfortunately, he has flashed a lot more bad than good and his long-term future with the team doesn’t look great to this point.
By all accounts, Green was a developmental prospect coming out of Illinois. He was primarily a guard in college and his technique as a blocker, in general, was questionable. Those issues have made themselves known this season, as Green has constantly been bullied along the interior of the line. He has easily been the weakest link on an offensive line that hasn’t been particularly good this year.
Worse yet, his snapping mechanics have seemingly regressed as the season has gone on. Green is consistently snapping the ball too high which is leading to bad starts on offensive drives. Add all of this together and it has been a bad year for Green. He has been one of the teams’ worst rookies so far this year. He has been a huge step back at center this season.
Steelers Devin Bush
One of the most hotly talked about issues with this team has been the regression of Devin Bush this season. While he was recovering from an ACL injury early on, at this point that process has to have wrapped up. Yet Bush is still playing poorly. He looks far less explosive than he did before, and his processing has been mediocre leading to missed assignments and blown defensive plays.
It is no coincidence that the team’s decline in run defense has coincided with Bush’s horrendous play. While there are other factors at play, Bush has been a pivotal reason that running backs are running through wide-open holes. Add in his coverage, which has also been bad, and Bush has been a trainwreck on the field. The team has tried supplementing him with Robert Spillane when healthy, but the talk of a benching now has to be considered.
It has been quite the fall from grace for Bush, as the former top-ten pick has gone from an ascending player to one that is hard to watch on the field. While he should still see regular play on the defense this season, he may be a candidate to be replaced in 2022. His disaster of a season has earned him the ire of most of Steelers’ nation.
Steelers Chase Claypool
While his play hasn’t been nearly as bad as any of the other players on the list, Chase Claypool has had a bad season for a variety of other reasons. For starters, and most importantly, Claypool has suffered a pretty severe sophomore slump in 2021. The big-play threat has been lacking from his rookie season, and his inconsistencies have been well documented.
Claypool has been able to win deep but lapses in concentration have affected his on-the-field play. He has also seen a significant decrease in his red-zone production, a bad sign for a 6’4 receiver. All of that isn’t great, but the reason he finds himself on the naughty list is due to his attitude. Claypool has been extremely immature so far, showing off when he shouldn’t and getting into arguments which leads to penalties.
Add in his obscene comments about playing music at practice and Claypool has quickly gone from a fan favorite to the bane of Steelers nation. While there should be hope that he rebounds next season, just like Diontae Johnson did, that won’t be enough. His play needs to get better, and he needs to mature off the field. Until then, he will remain on the naughty list.
While the Steelers’ struggles in 2021 aren’t all due to just these players, these four are key reasons why the team has regressed. While there are ways for all of them to improve, these players have to get better in order to get off of the holiday naughty list going forward.