Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike McCarthy went viral for the wrong reason on Monday for a comment he made about his team following their disappointing 27–24 loss to the Cleveland Browns last Thursday. McCarthy was quoted saying: "We need to clean our own house. Our house is not clean right now," via ESPN's Brooke Pryor.
Many fans dissected this statement as meaning that McCarthy wanted to get rid of some players, maybe even veteran quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who specifically struggled in the loss. The coach-quarterback duo, who reunited this year following their previous partnership with the Green Bay Packers, were caught in a tense moment during Thursday's game when Rodgers called out McCarthy's play call with some expletives. Apparently, though, fans misunderstood what McCarthy meant in his comment on Monday.
Pittsburgh tight end Pat Freiermuth cleared the air on Tuesday when speaking to reporters. "'I think people got that not accurate," Freiermuth said, via PennLive's Nick Farabaugh. "It was more so of us going over the first four weeks, what we can get better at, going on the same page, and what we can do over the next four weeks until the bye week.
Everything is good in the locker room. We're 2-2, we wish we were better, but there are things on film that are correctable that we are able to fix.'" Freiermuth is essentially saying that McCarthy meant that the Steelers planned to re-evaluate the season thus far and figure out what's not clicking within the team to fix as the season continues. That's definitely a normal thing every NFL team does, but McCarthy chose some really weird diction to describe it.
He had to know that saying the phrase "clean house" would set off alarm bells for NFL fans. The Steelers will attempt to redeem themselves on Sunday when they face the Indianapolis Colts.
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