Earlier in the offseason, back around March or April, former Steelers safety Ryan Clark caught a lot of flak from the local media, the fans, and even his old teammates for sort of pulling the curtain on the inner-workings of his old team (and the NFL in-general) by going on national TV and revealing that certain players in the locker room partook in marijuana use for medicinal purposes in-order to lessen the effects of the cumulative punishment an NFL player's body had to endure during a season and a career.
The general feeling about the always outspoken Clark was that he should just have kept his mouth shut, and what goes on inside the locker room is the business of the players and the coaches. Clark was labeled a "snitch," a "whistle-blower," and was even deemed a bad teammate by Antonio Brown, who was very critical of Clark's revelation.
Later-on in the offseason, when the Steelers were a legit candidate to find themselves the stars of the 2014 edition of Hard Knocks, the HBO documentary that chronicles the day-to-day training camp activities of an NFL team as it prepares for the upcoming season, many were against the idea for fear that all those producers, directors and cameras would create a big distraction.
Fast-forward to late August, on the dawn of a new 2014 NFL campaign. As the Steelers prepare for an NFL season they hope will be different from the previous two, they now have to deal with the possibility of losing their top two tailbacks--Le'Veon Bell and LeGarrette Blount--because they were pulled over by police on Wednesday in Ross Township and busted for possessing 20 grams of marijuana.
How many games will they miss? How will Art Rooney II, Kevin Colbert and head coach Mike Tomlin handle this situation? Will they make examples of this running back tandem that was deemed a crucial part of the team's possible success in 2014 or will they look hypocritical by doing nothing? Will NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell drop the hammer on the two young running backs, as many fans suspect he will because they think he's out to get their team?
Will the Steelers have to go out and re-sign Isaac Redman, who isn't playing anywhere right now and might not even be in shape?
The actions of Bell and Blount Wednesday afternoon (being caught with weed and not just talking about it to Stephen A. Smith) were true examples of being a bad teammate, because they could severely compromise a promising season before it even gets started.
That is far worse than being a snitch or a whistle-blower.
The distractions that the team will now face, what with the likes of ESPN sniffing around its South Side facility for the next week or so and the questions the front-office, coaches and Bell and Blount's teammates will now have to answer time and time again by both the national and local media are far greater than what some documentary crew possibly could create.
I think, here on August 21, 2014, the differences in both cases are quite clear.