Pittsburgh Steelers GM Kevin Colbert plays down reports of differences between owner and coach – NFL News
The Pittsburgh Steelers ruled out the possibility of differences between their owner and president, Art Rooney II, and their head coach, Mike Tomlin, over the controversial departure of their offensive co-ordinator, Bruce Arians, a couple of weeks earlier.
Arians announced that he was retiring from the league as an assistant coach after what was claimed by the team that he had served the game well enough and decided to call it a day from it.
It later emerged to be a controversial decision and reports in some sections of media pointed out that Bruce’s decision of retirement had come in the wake of his team management’s refusal to renew his contract, which was due to expire later this year (2012).
Some of the reports claimed that Bruce Arians’ choice of retirement had been made by someone other than the official himself and team’s president, Art Rooney II, was pinpointed to be the main figure behind imposing of that decision on Arians.
All those reports proved to be credible when Bruce came out of his so called retirement to join the Indianapolis Colts in the similar role, a couple of weeks later.
Apparently, the official himself refrained from commenting on the reports of his controversial departure from the Pittsburgh, he did not deny either that he left the side in no way a good environment.
The president came under fire from the football community, especially from fans of their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, as the player was reported to be not happy over the decision of his team to let the offensive coach go.
After lapse of about two weeks, Steelers’ general manager, Kevin Colbert, has now come to the rescue of the owner, saying that he did not play the meddlesome role in the team’s affairs and was not the only factor behind the decision of Bruce’s quitting the
game and team.
"Art Rooney obviously is the owner of the team and the president of the team," Colbert said. "Of course he's going to be in the loop on every decision as any chief operating officer would be of any corporation. I think to say he is meddlesome or dictating
every decision I think is very inaccurate.”
He attempted to clear the situation around the reports of differences between the owner and the head coach or Big Ben, saying all the decisions are a collective effort and contribution of the team officials.
"A lot of decisions are made around here with a collective effort and, in our end, when we're talking about players, it's a collective effort between myself, coach Tomlin and Art, and that's the way we do business," he added.
Both, Big Ben and the head coach, were reported to be not pleased with the Bruce Arians’ exit from Steelers and both the parties have not agreed to his controversial retirement’s decision.
After Bruce’s divorce from the team, Steelers have hired ex-Kansas City Chiefs’ head coach, Todd Haley, to take over the responsibilities of offensive co-ordinator.
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