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Art Rooney II

Art Rooney II Says He’s A Hands-Off Owner

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Oh what a tangled web we weave…

The Pittsburgh Steelers have long been associated with doing things “the right way.” In fact, the “right way” has frequently been referred to as the Steeler Way. Some have even dubbed it the Rooney Way. Seeing as no franchise has experienced more success than the Black and Gold, it’s a credit both management and ownership richly deserve.

However, this off-season has been a bit perplexing. Heck, the past year has been weird. From devising devious gimmicks in order to circumnavigate the NFL’s concussion policy to team president Art Rooney II dictating the firing of Bruce Arians then lying by claiming he retired, the Steelers have been behaving very un-Steelerlike. Now that even the most diehard Yinzer has started to wonder what the hell they’re doing, Deuce Rooney took to his unofficial PR staff aka the local newspapers in order to do a little damage control. The result of his interviews with the Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review only serve to paint him as more of a weasel than initially thought.

The most telling bit is how Rooney deliberately parsed his words to avoid being called a liar somewhere down the line. In both articles, he stresses several times that Mike Tomlin made the call to hire Todd Haley as the team’s new offensive coordinator. That’s all well and good except Deuce is either the densest man alive or doesn’t realize that’s only HALF of the question. The other half was who fired Arians in the first place?
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Art Rooney Must Answer To Big Ben

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Anybody else expecting a nice quiet off-season for the Pittsburgh Steelers?

If so, you’ve got to be sorely disappointed. The Steelers coaching carousel continues to go round-and-round with yesterday’s news that linebackers coach Keith Butler is in serious negotiations to join the Indianapolis Colts as their defensive coordinator. Butler has long been tabbed as Dick LeBeau‘s heir apparent to the point the Steelers refused to allow him to interview with Pittsburgh West Arizona about their DC job last summer. However, his contract is up this year and with LeBeau returning next season, it looks like he’s sick of waiting his turn.

In a twist of irony, if Butler does leave for Indianapolis, he’ll join ex-offensive coordinator Bruce Arians, who was named the Colts OC on Friday. Wait, I thought BA had “retired?” That bald-faced lie went up in smoke faster than Bret Favre’s last three “retirements.” In fact, team president Art Rooney II (who from this point on, I’ll nickname the Deuce as to separate him from the one true honorable Art Rooney) has now all but admitted it was his call to can Arians.

“I think the questions of how we got here are not really relevant,” the Deuce told the Post-Gazette when pressed on the issue of where the dismissal of Arians came from. If that non-denial denial wasn’t damning enough, he all but outed himself two sentences later when he said, “I think it was time for a change, and we’re looking forward to moving on.” Oh, YOU think it’s time for a change, huh Artie? What does your HEAD COACH think? Or doesn’t his opinion matter?
Read More »Art Rooney Must Answer To Big Ben