Cameron Heyward on leadership, team bonding | Pittsburgh Steelers

how difficult is the marriage you know the fact everybody wants a brand today just the way it is and you also have a job to do and some of them can intersect at times even during the season is it good not to do it during the season or how does that kind of play out um you have to you have to walk a fine line um this is time to do it time not to obviously you shouldn't have your phone out during a meeting you shouldn't be tweeting during a meeting but i think we play a game and it is our business but it's also to grow our business we all have personal brands and we should have good good personal brands so we can continue to capitalize on uh but you know at the end of the day we want to play football we want to have fun while we do it we want to do it as a team and as a unit and we should enjoy it this is like a once in a lifetime opportunity why why be so serious where you can't you know make fun of yourself you know some guys have tick tock videos i'm not doing those but because i'm not good at those i've seen yours bob pompieri has the best tick-tock videos i can do it you can do it you can you might you might sneak me in there on one but uh you won't see me making many i'm wondering is are leaders born or are they made in your in your experience both um you know there are guys that can grow up through the ranks i feel like i grew up from guys of the past you know watching casey hampton watching brett keysel watching james ferry or aaron smith those guys taught me at the same time i felt like you know i've always been the guy who won the lead you know my favorite power ranger growing up was the red ranger because i always wanted to be the leader you know that's just the way i was like you know i i want to be the guy who's leading the ship i appreciate it but it's about being honest it's not about who gets the glory it's about making sure everybody's accountable moving forward when you guys are talking are you talking about ben's comments has it been a big topic among you guys not at all not at all um we respect ben ben has comments i wanted to address it before he got to training camp but uh man we're focused on football we're focused on bonding um you know we had uh we had some mean games of uh jenga and uno um you know i don't think we really concerned ourselves with what ben said you know it's easy on defense to see where the leaders are with their established guys it's not the same way are you comfortable going to the offensive guys and trying to help the young guys that are probably going to be part of this najis or whatever and helping them along to figure this out or is it sort of like is that like a separate unit no it can't be a separate unit um we all have to grow um obviously naji is the you know the forefront uh off of his last year and you know you see the way he plays but there's there's hidden leaders in that you look at a guy like chooks uh chooks has been around um he should be the leader in the o-line room it's a different type of leading than marquis pouncey but it's still leading it's a it's by leading by example um you know what what are our tight ends going to do you know i think they have a big responsibility you know pat firemouth you look zach gentry both guys one guy's been around for a year and you know he's pretty talented a guy like zach gentry can step up as well he's been here for a while there are different ways guys can step up and lead you don't just need a c on your chest to be a leader are there any other red flags that you see besides phones out are there any other obvious red flags it's not a red flag i was just making i was making up an example like do you have some other examples like hey i gotta go talk to this guy the same uh you know if you're taking off your pads in the middle of a game we're gonna have a problem like like hey like that happened no it hasn't happened on this team i don't think it will uh i love av to death but he wasn't doing that here we have plenty of guys that would have handled that but uh you know i think you know they're are obvious mistakes and obvious things that come um and understanding that we do this together it's not one guy it's not two guys uh it is a team sport and i love it because everybody has to be accountable for that okay when you look at naji and he's been you know pointed to as someone who is going to be a leader is he reluctant to step in that role i mean are you guys having to guide him in it a little bit more is he someone that this is a natural progression for him you could see it was a natural progression last year um you know naji was always you know asking for more and you know hungry for to lead and be vocal uh you know naji is a guy that leads by example um and it's always just on and knows how to you know just be in the weight room just trying to get better um but guy's got to follow his lead and there's going to be plenty of guys to do that i don't know who our quarterback's going to be but you know they're going to have to lead as well who should your quarterback be don't know don't you put me in that box and tell me i got to name a starter today uh it's not my job and coach t is going to have fun doing it how much fun is it for you as a defensive guy to see this quarterback competition kind of take shape across the lines uh it's a different battle um you know having been all those years you always knew who was gonna be the starting quarterback it was who was fighting for two um you know it's there's a lot more pressure on that position right now um but it's up to the defense and uh other parts of the offense to step up to make it easy on them did you guys hear the fan that y'all i think started out with two in completions fan you know yesterday get pick it in there just kidding i think but is that i mean are you guys hearing chirping like that not at all um you know we appreciate our fans but most of the times we're too busy getting chewed out to focus on that can all of you guys have tj's back last year when he was doing the holding thing uh-huh is it the same exact situation with deontay you guys see where he's coming from uh you know i see exactly where he's coming from like you know tj went through a situation like i remember even before i got here uh guys talking about when heinz was holding out and then you know they finally got heinz here and you know that was a big thing everybody's got their own situation and how they handle is differently if it's not disrupting the team um it's not disrupting us is that concerned though that every starter anywhere's fourth season might wanna and once a new contract might take this kind of approach no honestly no like we uh we're here to do a job um one like my t always says one man's misfortune is another man's fortune uh this gives a chance for other guys to step up a guy like george pickens to get some reps calvin austin chase claypool will get more reps and they shouldn't run from it um deontay will be ready by week one but i don't think he's going to harm the team in any way hey kim can you give a little scouting report on the two left guards they look good in shorts like like there's nothing that's really happened so far so can i ask you next week uh give me two weeks okay give me two weeks cam i'm curious then towards the end there he talked to us one day about how he felt it was his job to sort of impart sort of the lore of the steelers on something i don't know if that was actually happening but that's what he told us there is a lot of tradition here yes i mean do you feel now i mean now you're in he's the spot you're in kc spot i mean you're that dude do you feel it's your job to sort of educate these guys on sort of what it means to play for this team i don't think i have to educate because you know obviously i have stories and i'll share them but the cool thing about here is we get those guys coming back like ike taylor's gonna be up here he's able to talk about all those super bowl memories and they sound a lot better coming from him than me um you know you'll get franco you'll get uh chris hope guys that you know might not have been the most famous all the time but everybody appreciated what they did you know there's always going to be history and mike t does a great job of integrating that history i remember i always remember every year during preseason we would play carolina panthers and we would talk about that being the last game and he would show all the clips from the years before of all these guys that you know nobody knew at the time going on to do great things after that carolina panthers game so you know there's a great you know tradition set but i think the history just comes through naturally and organically

Channel: Pittsburgh Steelers

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Keywords: steelers, nfl, steelers news, pittsburgh steelers news, pittsburgh, pittsburgh steelers, steelers 2022, 2022 steelers, 2022 Pittsburgh Steelers, 2022 NFL, NFL 2022, 2022 Steelers, steelers interview, steelers press conference, nfl sound, steelers players, steelers offseason, player press conference, press conference, media availability, media avail, american football, steelers highlights, steelers sound, Training Camp, Cam Heyward, Cameron Heyward

Id: Aui43ZKoSkI

Length: 8min 44sec (524 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022