When a team is losing, fighting an overwhelming sense of frustration and playing the blame game can, at times, be harder to deal with than what your opponent throws at you.
Arthur Maulet seems to know that, and is trying to convince his Steelers teammates to not things slip away still early into the 2022 season.
Maulet, according to multiple reports from those in the locker room following Sunday’s 38-3 dismantling at the hands of the Buffalo Bills, got into a verbal shouting match with some of his teammates.
“It’s fine. It wasn’t even a lot of guys,” Maulet said Thursday. “I was talking to a couple of (defensive backs). The locker room wasn’t even filled. It was kind of taken out of proportion.
“I was just telling my guys that you’ve got to find your love for the game again. Sometimes people forget because you have a lot of things going on. It is what it is.”
Five games in, and it’s a fair question to ask. Why are players losing their ‘love’ for the game, and has there four-game skid that Pittsburgh is on started to cause some to lose optimism on the season at large.
“I was heated,” Maulet said. “We lost by 30. You’re not supposed to be happy about that, right? I was just reminding the guys to find your ‘why.’ Find why you love this game and use that for your motivation. That’s it.
“You have to have something that drives you, and you have to remind yourself.”
Some Steelers players were coughing laughing and joking on the sideline while down by five touchdowns. That’s a bad look, of course, and Maulet seemed to notice.
"I'm not here to point fingers,” he said. “We keep that in house. It was just something that I had to acknowledge."
Maulet may not seem, on the surface, like a leader of the defense. He’s in just his second year with the Steelers, after all. But he may be the type of voice this team needs.
He came to Pittsburgh following a two year run with the Jets. In 2020, New York went 2-14, a total disaster that got away from the Jets early with an 0-13 start.
So perhaps Maulet is just doing all he can to ensure this Steelers season doesn’t have a similar fate.
“We were all down,” he said. “I was just reminding guys that we’ve got to love what we do. Days like this suck, but we can bounce back and be better.”
Ultimately, he knows that passion and commitment can help turn around a slumping football team, and that his vocal frustration with his teammates will be processes correctly.
"It's behind,” he said. “It was five minutes of talking to the guys, just reminding them that you've got to have love for what you do, and play harder."
“When I put my helmet on, I remind myself of my ‘why’s’ and why I do this and why I love the game. That’s how I approach every day.”