Good morning,

    Are the Steelers coming unglued?
    One simple anonymous comment has evoked all kinds of reactions, but none more stinging than those Antonio Brown made during his tour de force of ESPN’s studios in Connecticut Wednesday.
        Brown, the team’s MVP in 2011, acknowledged that the locker room – a.k.a. the Steelers players – were splintered in 2012.
  “Our team was a team last year where guys wasn’t really together,’’ told ESPN’s First Take. “As we know in the NFL, you got to have a band of brothers. Everyone got to be together and it got to filter down from the leadership.”
    Brown and others like Larry Foote and Ryan Clark knocked the  the anonymous teammate for his comment critical of LaMarr Woodley. Brown took it a step further.
“Then other guys supporting it… It goes to show you that we wasn’t a team in 2012. So some of the things we got to iron out and we’re looking to get those things corrected.”
 I don’t know where I’ve seen other Steelers publicly supporting the comment made against Woodley. Perhaps privately they have. I also haven’t seen anyone publicly support Woodley. All they’ve done is knock the player for saying it and then Brown saying the team was split last year. No one has really defended Woodley or come out and say he actually, you know, did play well last year or did work out or wasn’t “awful” as his accuser said.
      Brown on Wednesday was scheduled to appear on six different ESPN shows – four on television, two on radio, starting with the morning’s First Take and going through the Hill & Schlereth ESPN Radio show that was broadcast from 7-10 p.m.
   On ESPN’s Sports Center, Brown said the Steelers were different in his third season than in his first two.
    “Guys weren’t really together,” Brown said.
     Brown also said on Sports Center, via ProFootballTalk.com, that Troy Polamalu, among other veterans, told the team that selfish behavior would not be tolerated, yet it continued.
 “That’s when you know you’ve got issues and you’ve got to come together as a team,’’ Brown said. “Because the reality of a team game is everyone on the same page, committed to the same thing, dedicated for one goal, and that’s winning.”
    Some point to Brown and the Steelers Young Money wide receivers crew as the center of the problem. They were selfish in 2012, we’ve been told, and without Hines Ward and a strong coaching hand, they were allowed to do their own thing, causing some “fractures” both in the locker room and on the playing field.
      Maybe not coincidentally, young wide receivers coach Scottie Montgomery quit after the season to take an assistant’s job at Duke University. Mike Wallace will soon leave as a free agent.
       The Steelers have lost four assistant coaches since the preseason – one fired by coach Mike Tomlin in August and three others leaving, presumably, on their own. Tomlin has hired three coaches to take their places.
     Brown has cited a lack of leadership in the team’s locker room and that is expected to be drained some more when the Steelers allow some veterans to leave via free agency and possibly release others before the March 12 new calendar season and free agency begin.
     Onto some stuff:
   --- One of those veterans who may be released is guard Willie Colon. If so, it would show again the one-way street that is an NFL contract. Colon turned down better money from the Chicago Bears to re-sign with the Steelers in 2011 for five years and $29 million. He’s due $3.5 million in 2013 on a contract that still has three years left. There has been no dialogue between the Steelers and Colon’s agent, Joe Linta, to possibly reduce his salary. One source says the Steelers will release him. They would owe him nothing if they do but a drop-in-the-bucket injury settlement if he does not pass a physical because of the left knee injury that put him on IR Dec. 18.
--- It’s Feb. 21 and Mike Tomlin still hasn’t filled one opening on his coaching staff.
--- Don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a reaction over an anonymous comment from a Steelers player than I have this one about Woodley. Perhaps it’s the age we live in with all the blogs and 24-hour talk shows and social media that has kept it going. I won’t be satisfied, however, until I see every last player on the Steelers roster weigh in with his reaction.
--- People keep asking me if I noticed this so-called “fracture” in the Steelers locker room. The media are guests in that locker room for roughly 2 ½ hours a week during the season, Wednesday through Friday. Much of that time, fewer than half the players are in the room and many of them act, not surprisingly, different when the media’s around than when they are just around their teammates. So, no, I did not notice a big difference.
 --- Had the Steelers pulled out a few more of those 3-point losses and made the playoffs, nobody would be talking about their “fractured” locker room. And I’d like to know if it became fractured while they were running out to a 6-3 record, or if the fracture occurred when they won only two of their final seven games.

First Published: April 6, 2016, 4:16 p.m.