Effectively, Martavis Bryant is a child who cannot keep his mouth shut, and the Steelers have decided that they do not have any time for his mess. He has been posting to social media about how unhappy he is, and that is a major problem with the way that he is managing his image. He is very talented, but he looks stupid when he can get himself benched because of what he said on social media. The Steelers will give you every chance in the world, but Bryant is not going to get any more chances. That is why this looks bad. Bryant looks silly, and the Steelers look hypocritical.
The social media posts
Bryant just could not stop posting to social media, and that is why he has been benched for the next game for the Steelers. In a vacuum, that makes total sense. You can see why the team has chosen to bench him, and you can understand that they are building up a case for cutting him. They can look back and say that they did everything that they should have done to make sure that he understood what he should have been doing. This is kind of how you have to discipline a small child, and the Steelers will have a good case.
The Steelers changed their tune
The Steelers started out trying to say that Bryant was happy in Pittsburgh, but we all saw through that. Now they have benched Bryant because they could not stop lying about how he feels about being on this team.
The issue is that they have been completely disingenuous in this process. Do we remember that Big Ben was charged with sexual assault? Do we remember that whole incident? Oh, you forgot because he got married and had a kid? What did the Steelers do about that? They did not do a thing.
The racial issue
You can tell me that the racial issue is not at play here because Big Ben is more important to the team than Martavis Bryant, but you have to remember that it looks really bad when a team in a very white, blue color town benches a black guy for doing something that is not even remotely as bad as sexual assault.
Posting things on social media and being sullen is nothing compared to what Big Ben was accused of doing, but we have to give Bryant all these warnings because he is such a cancer in the locker room? No. The Steelers are just making themselves look a little bit too preferential toward white players, and they are going to keep digging a hole because they cannot go back and fix how they dealt with Big Ben and his case.
I wish that the Steelers would look at how bad this looks, handle it in-house, and shut up.
