Joey Porter becomes latest ex-Steeler to rip Ben Roethlisberger's leadership

The bashing of Ben Roethlisberger’s leadership skills continued from former Pittsburgh Steelers, with Joey Porter telling the NFL Network the quarterback is selfish with his power and waited too long to apologize to Antonio Brown.

Porter, who was fired by the Steelers in January after four seasons as outside linebackers coach, said Roethlisberger abuses his star status within the organization.

“It’s clear he has the power, and how he uses it? He uses it for him,” said Porter, a four-time Pro Bowl linebacker with the Steelers who was Roethlisberger’s teammate when they won Super Bowl XL. “You want your locker room to love you.”

Joey Porter and @Terrell_Davis have VERYYYY different stories about their old QB's ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/M5IF13Nz4b

— NFL Total Access (@NFLTotalAccess) May 24, 2019

Porter also said “it’s a little too late” for Roethlisberger to make amends with Brown after publicly criticizing the All-Pro wide receiver on his weekly radio show. Brown lashed out at Roethlisberger during the offseason on social media and an appearance on an HBO show.

“Once you have a bad situation, they’re not going to pick up the phone,” Porter said of Roethlisberger’s relationship with Brown, who was traded to the Oakland Raiders in March. “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.”

Hall of Fame running back Terrell Davis, also a guest on the NFL Network, said Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway used his status to help his teammates.

“You’re not on a different level,” Davis said. “I played with John Elway, and the one thing I respected about John is that John had power — he had a lot of power — but he never abused that power. He never took advantage of being John Elway.

“When I saw that as a young player, I gravitated toward that. I respected John. I trusted John. And that’s how you endear yourself to teammates. When you have power, and you don’t abuse it … if you abuse it, you abuse it for the players.”

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