Ryan Clark is hearing too many old voices from his locker room getting in the Steelers’ business out in public. In light of the recent firestorm Joey Porter Sr. set off by attacking Ben Roethlisberger, we’re seeing all sorts of players from the past chiming in today. While Clark himself is in the media, though, he thinks it’s time for an intervention for the old heads.
“Do we need to bring our old asses to former player counseling?”, Clark said in a video post on X. “I mean, bro, what is we doing? Deebo trippin’, Ben trippin’, Joey calling. This isn’t how we live. We freaking love each other”.
It’s time for all of our Old @steelers’ a$ses to go to therapy! We are tripping. We taking bad bout coach T. We talking bad bout each other. Man we won Chips together. Let’s keep the family business family. We are old. It doesn’t matter.
Everyone has different locker room… pic.twitter.com/DPA76Y1J3u
— Ryan Clark (@Realrclark25) February 13, 2026
Joey Porter accused Ben Roethlisberger of being both a bad teammate and a bad person. Appearing on Cam Heyward’s podcast, he went off on a tangent while discussing comments Roethlisberger and James Harrison made about former Steelers HC Mike Tomlin. In so many words, Clark, who played with all three men, said the old guard needs to stay out of it.
Following Porter’s comments, we saw players from the past couple decades weighing in with their own experiences of Roethlisberger as a teammate. Each of them is just a snapshot of one relationship with one individual in one point in time. As Ryan Clark pointed out, if the only thing Cam Heyward remembers about Clark was the veteran calling him a bust when he was a rookie, he would have a very different impression of the man today.
“Do we need to bring our old asses to former player therapy? Do we need to go?”, Clark repeated. “Do we need to have these conversations? Because we’ve got to stop, y’all. Not us. Not the Steelers. We’ve got the rings! What are we doing? We’re the greatest organization ever. At least we were. Now we’re just old, bitter mother effers that talk about each other. Come on, y’all”.
In a written caption accompanying the video, Clark certainly appeared to be serious. He talked about the need to “keep the family business family”, adding, “I’m gonna set up the Zoom” call. These are all men who played in a Steelers locker room that kept things behind closed doors.
The reality, though, is that that ship sailed years ago. And it’s likely equally true for every locker room in the league, even the Patriots’. We live in a world overly drenched in media. Half the players on any given roster, it seems, has a podcast. And they invite older players like Porter on, or guys like Roethlisberger have their own.
And so we hear more often from players of the past. And what do you think they’re going to talk about? The past, of course. When Ben Roethlisberger talks about the current Steelers, it’s clear that he doesn’t follow closely as often as not. You didn’t hear a ton from Joey Porter about the current state of the Steelers. James Harrison may break down the games, but he sometimes resorts to numbers rather than names.
When you put microphones on people who haven’t played in five, 10, 15 years, they’re going to talk about their experiences from five, 10, and 15 years ago. Porter brought up Chris Hoke—when is the last time he played? Is that current with the Steelers’ team of today? To Ryan Clark’s point, these former Steelers aren’t doing their old team any favors. Not that they were trying to.
But what sort of obligation do they have, real or imagined, to keeping things in-house? At the very least, they ought not cause drama for today’s players. But then again, this was Cam Heyward’s podcast, and he put it out there. So you can’t just point the finger at the old asses—or at least the old asses who already retired.
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