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Sunday, May 16, 1999 By Shelly Anderson, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
Greg Lloyd, who has rarely talked about the Steelers since being cut by the team, did so yesterday. And the first thing he said was, "There are no hard feelings. I understand they had to do what they thought they had to do."
That doesn't mean that the team's former star linebacker is happy with the way things went.
Lloyd -- who played last season with the Carolina Panthers and now is a free agent -- said there was a misconception over why the Steelers cut him.
"They lied when they said I wouldn't take a pay cut. They never asked me to."
Instead, he traces the beginning of the end to a staph infection he got from an injection into a sore ankle. Lloyd said details about his battle against the bacterial infection were not always conveyed accurately, although he noted, "You're talking to a guy who almost died."
He described his football career as being "in limbo" and is concerned that fears about his health and durability are discouraging teams from signing him.
"I played a whole year on a bad ankle [at Carolina] because it really didn't get better until after the season," Lloyd said. "It still gets sore. But I'm in shape. I run. I do tae kwon do. I lift weights."
Lloyd was a sixth-round draft pick by the Steelers in 1987 out of Fort Valley State. While with the team, he went to five consecutive Pro Bowls, two as a starter, and was twice selected by his teammates as Steelers MVP.
Lloyd, who was in town to test for his fourth-degree black belt in tae kwon do, said he still has a warm spot in his heart for Steelers president Dan Rooney.
"Mr. Rooney is probably the classiest guy I've ever met."
Yet Lloyd is indifferent to an offer Rooney made publicly a couple weeks ago to sign Lloyd and former Steelers cornerback Rod Woodson to one-day contracts at the end of their careers so they could retire as Steelers.
"If they said that, that's nice," Lloyd said, "but I really can't comment on that because they never mentioned anything to me, so that's maybe something they said to try to smooth things over."
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