Bud Dupree blames former teammate James Harrison’s poor actions for getting himself cut from the Pittsburgh Steelers and per Sean Gentille says it’s wrong that the fans and media think that the team bailed on the veteran linebacker.
Speaking on a weekly radio show, Dupree said:
“Harrison “cut himself” with his actions. That’s basically what happened, Dupree told the PG’s Paul Zeise. At the end of the day, he just did a lot of stuff that really wasn’t Steeler-like. It’s no one’s fault on our team, why he got cut. He cut his self. He came in, he didn’t want to do anything that made us better.”
Harrison, one of the greatest players in Steelers history joining the Patriots a few weeks ahead of a possible AFC Championship rematch was always going to cause controversy. Dupree admits he’s got bashed for it, despite stating that he hardly saw the veteran in meetings.
“I look on my Instagram, Twitter, people bashing me like I got something to do with him getting cut. Like what?” he said. People going on in on coach Tomlin, saying the Steelers are stupid for cutting James Harrison, the Steelers are dumb, [Harrison’s] gonna tell the whole — if he tells the whole playbook, that’s his fault. I didn’t see him in meetings, so I don’t know if he knows the plays or not.”
Dupree has also called out Harrison for playing the victim and that veteran got jealous of himself and TJ Watt when he was originally brought back to be a mentor to them.
“He made it clear to us early [that he didn’t want to be here]. We try to look at Deebo as a mentor, as the O.G. of the team. We all tried to give him a chance just to be the leader and be the person that, before we got here, the Steelers portrayed him to be. Just coming in to it, you see James Harrison and because he’s this great player you try to follow his footsteps. But when someone really doesn’t want to share wisdom with you or share knowledge with you because they feel like you’re gonna take their shine or take their limelight, that’s how we feel. We tried to hold back as much as we could because we didn’t wanna jeopardize making him look bad. We still respect him as a person. As a person we still love Deebo. And we feel like he could’ve been the leader that they wanted him to be, and I feel like he could’ve been the person that we wanted him to be.”
Another thing that Dupree also criticized were the social media workout videos that Harrison so heavily focused on and says that it would be very lame of the veteran to actually hand over the Steelers playbook to give the Patriots an advantage.
“It’s not that we don’t choose to work out like [Harrison works] out,” he said. “The strength coaches, they won’t even allow us to lift how he lifts. He’s in the weight room, making all those videos before practice, calling us out. Now you’re making them look at us, like, so me and T.J. aren’t supposed to be playing? That’s just how we feel. But we kept letting it slide, letting it slide, letting it slide. Deebo, he’s supposed to be the O.G. He’s supposed to be the leader. We’re supposed to look up to him, but man, it got crazy.”
“If he did that, that’d be real fugazi, lame, L-12, pull-up-on-’em type … you can’t just take the whole playbook. Now you’re going too far. But he may have did that. You never know. He may be at that point where he’s so mad, he probably just said, ‘All right, I don’t really know the playbook this year, but I’m finna take the whole playbook to Bill and let him do what he does.’ ”
Harrison was also accused of falling asleep in meetings he did attend and snoring loudly while doing it.