Martavis Bryant has not yet received the heart-to-heart talk he wants with Ben Roethlisberger, but it apparently will occur.
“He texted me and said ‘Let’s talk.’ I said no problem,” Roethlisberger said Friday during an interview with the Post-Gazette.
“We haven’t talked other than he told me he’d love to sit down and chat with me and I’m all for it. I’m looking forward to it actually.”
Bryant said he was unhappy with some things Roethlisberger said publicly a year ago after the NFL suspended the wide receiver for the entire 2016 season for again violating the league’s drug policy.
“We should have a man-to-man,” Bryant told ESPN two weeks ago. “Because some of the things he put out there about me, I kind of didn’t agree with how he did it. So I want to sit down and hear his own opinion, man-to-man, about why he did that.”
Roethlisberger, in an interview early in training camp last year, told the Post-Gazette he was disappointed because he felt Bryant lied to him about his drug use.
“We talked a lot, every day during his suspension we talked,” Roethlisberger said last July. “And then when [the second suspension] happened we talked. As soon as the news broke I kind of asked him what happened. He said some things that were just kind of disappointing.
“I just think the approach, the denial of everything. Looking me in my eye and denying everything, it’s tough. It disappoints you as a man and a guy who cared so much about him. I obviously care a lot about him as a person and a football player.”
Roethlisberger said at the time he gave up trying to talk to Bryant after he did not return messages. One year later, that part at least seems to have been resolved with Bryant’s text to his quarterback.
Bryant is with the Steelers in training camp but cannot practice until he is fully cleared by the NFL more than 16 months after it suspended him for one year.
Ed Bouchette: ebouchette@post-gazette.com
First Published: July 28, 2017, 6:00 p.m.
