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Bad JuJu is Just What The Steelers Need
'BAD JUJU' IS JUST WHAT THE STEELERS NEED
JuJu Smith-Schuster is out to be remembered like Randy Moss—and to carry the legacy of Steelers greatness into a new generation.
TYLER DUNNE
PITTSBURGH
OCTOBER 3, 2019
The swagger, the calm, the certainty inside the Steelers locker room was palpable back in January 2018. One of the NFL's most treasured franchises was on the verge of a seventh Lombardi Trophy. You could feel it. Sense it.
Practically everywhere you looked was a future Hall of Famer. Ben Roethlisberger and Le'Veon Bell and Antonio Brown. All at the peak of their powers. After a 13-3 regular season, these Steelers undoubtedly had the talent to first vanquish the imposters that were the Jaguars, then slay Tom Brady and the Patriots, then win the Super Bowl...and they knew it.
Confidence soared, right on down to a rookie sensation named JuJu Smith-Schuster.
The glow of that trio was not intimidating him.
"As a player, I want to be…" Smith-Schuster told B/R at the time, squinting and pausing a few seconds, "remembered. I say 'remembered,' because I don't want to be a guy who just comes by, walks through the locker room—'Oh, he did that'—and he's not remembered. I don't want to be the guy who's, 'Oh yeah, he's good, good, good.' I want to be remembered like Randy Moss. I want to leave a legacy here, like AB's doing it. I follow his footsteps every day.
"I'm trying to be the best of the best."
A few days later, an icy chill submerged a stadium that had transformed into nothing but yellow Terrible Towels and clouds of exhales from every mouth of every fan, coach and player with "Thunderstruck" booming from the speakers. You could practically hear John Facenda growl, see Jack Lambert snarl and feel goosebumps on your goosebumps when the ball was kicked. Another epic chapter was set to be written in the history of an epic franchise.
Then, instead, that franchise began the process of completely unraveling.
The Steelers were punished physically and dumped from the playoffs by those alleged imposters.
Bell, that revolutionary back, sat out the entire next season.
Brown, that GOAT-chasing receiver, redefined career suicide by quitting on the Steelers in Week 17 of the 2018 season and then, after being traded to the Raiders, falling deep and even deeper into a world of bizarre only he deems rational (treating most everyone he encounters as scum along the way).
Big Ben? He threw for a career-high 5,129 yards and 34 touchdowns in 2018 but also missed the playoffs for the first time in five years, and then he suffered a season-ending elbow injury in Week 2 of the 2019 season. He'll be 38 years old with 237 starts under his belt by the time 2020 rolls around.
It's been a cataclysmic chain of events, leaving Smith-Schuster as the last star standing.
Er, make that lying down, on a table inside the Steelers' weight room on this day some 20 months later, rocking Oakleys and a signature high-top fade.
Smith-Schuster's tone has not changed, nor has the team's.
The Steelers, now 1-3, still expect to win, because that's all they've known. Where other franchises would tank after a start like this, they're shipping off a first-round pick for safety Minkah Fitzpatrick—to get better now.
Such belief may prove to be utter delusion and make eventual rebuilding that much more painful. The Steelers may prove to be a team in denial, bleeding profusely, putting off the trip to urgent care.
But right here is a reason for hope that that won't happen: a 22-year-old face of the franchise to remind everyone that when one generation of stars fades in Pittsburgh, another is bound to emerge.
You just need to look a little deeper.
Yes, Smith-Schuster has morphed his name into a brand in record time. From losing his bike and turning #TeamFindJuJusBike into a national cause. To filming himself, constantly, letting the world know as only Smith-Schuster can when he finally got his driver's license or pranked locals as a "Fake JuJu." To going to prom with a high schooler whose date dumped him, chronicling it all. (The two had matching velvet suits.) To going viral for his love of Fortnite. To autographing a fan's head. (Smith-Schuster told the fan that he'd hook him up with tickets if he got the autograph tattooed, and the fan did, so Smith-Schuster paid up.)
To gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated. (Playing video games.) To introducing the word "litty" into common nomenclature. (This isn't Pittsburgh. This is "Littsburgh," he corrects.) To ramping up his Twitter following to 1.02 million, his IG to 2.9 million, his YouTube channel to 849K.
Smith-Schuster could be perceived as a product of our times, as another self-appointed Generation Z celebrity in need of those minute-by-minute, second-by-second hits of dopamine. Even his the French Bulldog, Boujee, is verified on IG with 223K followers.
Look deeper, though, and there's more to Smith-Schuster than anything an app spits out. A substance. A toughness. Everything the city of Pittsburgh appreciates. He is the one who the Steelers can build around. He is the one who can carry forward the tradition built by the Steel Curtain and company in the 70s and kept alive by Bill Cowher and Jerome Bettis and Troy Polamalu and Roethlisberger—of a franchise that can't be knocked down for long, one that's only missed the playoffs in consecutive years once this century.
Smith-Schuster sits up straight and stares ahead, his eyes concealed behind those sunglasses.
No, he's not afraid to speak up. "Definitely not afraid. I just tell it how it is."
Because this is his team now, and that's fine by him.
"No pressure, no pressure. I don't feel pressure," he says. "I got guys with me, so they're going to ride or die."
The Steelers will be back because they always are. He'll be the reason why, too.
The JuJu Smith-Schuster who isn't packaged into tidy, filtered IG posts.
This JuJu Smith-Schuster.
The moment Smith-Schuster demolished Vontaze Burfict as a rookie is precisely when his popularity skyrocketed. Burfict was a hated adversary in Pittsburgh. A villain. And this 6'1", 215-pound receiver channeled an entire fanbase's fury in lurking over him, WWE-style. He he was fined, suspended, whatever. Smith-Schuster was also promptly offered free drinks, free food, free parking, free anything he'd ever want in this city.
A star was born.
"That's when my whole life changed," Smith-Schuster says. "This city shows so much love. Unbelievable. Wherever I go, it's all love. I can be in a bad neighborhood, and everyone's on my side. That's just how it is around here."
Here's the thing: Burfict wasn't his first victim.
Growing up, rugby was his true love.
During one preseason rugby game, he clotheslined a kid.
The scene was mayhem, with the benches clearing and that kid's parents cussing out Smith-Schuster's parents. Smith-Schuster got suspended for the entire regular season with practically no debate. Of course, he returned for the playoffs and led his South Bay Spartans club team to a championship. He played for the Spartans six years in all, relishing the padless violence. Several colleges even recruited Smith-Schuster to play rugby, and his mom, Sammy Toa-Schuster, thinks he would've made this sport his No. 1 priority had he been offered a full scholarship.
That first year, Mom couldn't go anywhere in Pittsburgh without someone telling her Smith-Schuster was their hero for knocking out Burfict—"I've never seen anyone so happy to see someone get hit like that!" she says. Quite a different reaction from that rugby clothesline.
CINCINNATI, OH - DECEMBER 04: JuJu Smith-Schuster #19 of the Pittsburgh Steelers stands over Vontaze Burfict #55 of the Cincinnati Bengals after a hit during the second half at Paul Brown Stadium on December 4, 2017 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
She tried to apologize to the other kid's parents that day, but they weren't having it. Maybe because, as she recalls, the kid was sent to the hospital.
Smith-Schuster is different than everything we're trained to think about the NFL wide receiver.
He loved playing defense on his Long Beach Polytechnic (California) high school football team, too, and was ranked by Rivals as the No. 2 safety prospect in the class of 2014 nationally, just ahead of Pro Bowl Jets safety Jamal Adams. That's why he loves blocking today, the grunt work that most receivers equate to cleaning toilets. Smith-Schuster loves beelining toward a player who has 30 pounds on him—the challenge, the violence. Blocking brings him back to playing safety, to rugby. It's no shock he was carded all the time, with opposing parents always yelling, "Why is he playing? Take him out!"
When the other team saw Smith-Schuster warming up, Mom could hear all the whispers: "Oh my gosh. He's here. He's here."
"They were afraid of this guy," Sammy says. "And if you see the other team, they're huge. They're bigger than him."
Smith-Schuster remembers the clothesline well and makes no apologies. As he explains, he went low on someone who was smaller than him, which meant his forearm naturally lodged underneath the kid's head and, uh, in his words, "choked him." Thus, the mayhem. He's still convinced everyone on the other team went berserk just so he'd get kicked out, too. One thing he says is certain: This is the Samoan in him. Such heritage runs deep in his mother's genes, and his stepdad is also Samoan.
It's as if a menacing, yoked rugby player doing the (slightly terrifying) Haka ritual was suddenly dropped into an NFL Sunday.
Says Smith-Schuster: "I was around all Polynesians my whole life. That made me a more mean, physical person."
Adds Mom, "It's just that Samoan warrior side."
'BAD JUJU' IS JUST WHAT THE STEELERS NEED
JuJu Smith-Schuster is out to be remembered like Randy Moss—and to carry the legacy of Steelers greatness into a new generation.
TYLER DUNNE
PITTSBURGH
OCTOBER 3, 2019
The swagger, the calm, the certainty inside the Steelers locker room was palpable back in January 2018. One of the NFL's most treasured franchises was on the verge of a seventh Lombardi Trophy. You could feel it. Sense it.
Practically everywhere you looked was a future Hall of Famer. Ben Roethlisberger and Le'Veon Bell and Antonio Brown. All at the peak of their powers. After a 13-3 regular season, these Steelers undoubtedly had the talent to first vanquish the imposters that were the Jaguars, then slay Tom Brady and the Patriots, then win the Super Bowl...and they knew it.
Confidence soared, right on down to a rookie sensation named JuJu Smith-Schuster.
The glow of that trio was not intimidating him.
"As a player, I want to be…" Smith-Schuster told B/R at the time, squinting and pausing a few seconds, "remembered. I say 'remembered,' because I don't want to be a guy who just comes by, walks through the locker room—'Oh, he did that'—and he's not remembered. I don't want to be the guy who's, 'Oh yeah, he's good, good, good.' I want to be remembered like Randy Moss. I want to leave a legacy here, like AB's doing it. I follow his footsteps every day.
"I'm trying to be the best of the best."
A few days later, an icy chill submerged a stadium that had transformed into nothing but yellow Terrible Towels and clouds of exhales from every mouth of every fan, coach and player with "Thunderstruck" booming from the speakers. You could practically hear John Facenda growl, see Jack Lambert snarl and feel goosebumps on your goosebumps when the ball was kicked. Another epic chapter was set to be written in the history of an epic franchise.
Then, instead, that franchise began the process of completely unraveling.
The Steelers were punished physically and dumped from the playoffs by those alleged imposters.
Bell, that revolutionary back, sat out the entire next season.
Brown, that GOAT-chasing receiver, redefined career suicide by quitting on the Steelers in Week 17 of the 2018 season and then, after being traded to the Raiders, falling deep and even deeper into a world of bizarre only he deems rational (treating most everyone he encounters as scum along the way).
Big Ben? He threw for a career-high 5,129 yards and 34 touchdowns in 2018 but also missed the playoffs for the first time in five years, and then he suffered a season-ending elbow injury in Week 2 of the 2019 season. He'll be 38 years old with 237 starts under his belt by the time 2020 rolls around.
It's been a cataclysmic chain of events, leaving Smith-Schuster as the last star standing.
Er, make that lying down, on a table inside the Steelers' weight room on this day some 20 months later, rocking Oakleys and a signature high-top fade.
Smith-Schuster's tone has not changed, nor has the team's.
The Steelers, now 1-3, still expect to win, because that's all they've known. Where other franchises would tank after a start like this, they're shipping off a first-round pick for safety Minkah Fitzpatrick—to get better now.
Such belief may prove to be utter delusion and make eventual rebuilding that much more painful. The Steelers may prove to be a team in denial, bleeding profusely, putting off the trip to urgent care.
But right here is a reason for hope that that won't happen: a 22-year-old face of the franchise to remind everyone that when one generation of stars fades in Pittsburgh, another is bound to emerge.
You just need to look a little deeper.
Yes, Smith-Schuster has morphed his name into a brand in record time. From losing his bike and turning #TeamFindJuJusBike into a national cause. To filming himself, constantly, letting the world know as only Smith-Schuster can when he finally got his driver's license or pranked locals as a "Fake JuJu." To going to prom with a high schooler whose date dumped him, chronicling it all. (The two had matching velvet suits.) To going viral for his love of Fortnite. To autographing a fan's head. (Smith-Schuster told the fan that he'd hook him up with tickets if he got the autograph tattooed, and the fan did, so Smith-Schuster paid up.)
To gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated. (Playing video games.) To introducing the word "litty" into common nomenclature. (This isn't Pittsburgh. This is "Littsburgh," he corrects.) To ramping up his Twitter following to 1.02 million, his IG to 2.9 million, his YouTube channel to 849K.
Smith-Schuster could be perceived as a product of our times, as another self-appointed Generation Z celebrity in need of those minute-by-minute, second-by-second hits of dopamine. Even his the French Bulldog, Boujee, is verified on IG with 223K followers.
Look deeper, though, and there's more to Smith-Schuster than anything an app spits out. A substance. A toughness. Everything the city of Pittsburgh appreciates. He is the one who the Steelers can build around. He is the one who can carry forward the tradition built by the Steel Curtain and company in the 70s and kept alive by Bill Cowher and Jerome Bettis and Troy Polamalu and Roethlisberger—of a franchise that can't be knocked down for long, one that's only missed the playoffs in consecutive years once this century.
Smith-Schuster sits up straight and stares ahead, his eyes concealed behind those sunglasses.
No, he's not afraid to speak up. "Definitely not afraid. I just tell it how it is."
Because this is his team now, and that's fine by him.
"No pressure, no pressure. I don't feel pressure," he says. "I got guys with me, so they're going to ride or die."
The Steelers will be back because they always are. He'll be the reason why, too.
The JuJu Smith-Schuster who isn't packaged into tidy, filtered IG posts.
This JuJu Smith-Schuster.
The moment Smith-Schuster demolished Vontaze Burfict as a rookie is precisely when his popularity skyrocketed. Burfict was a hated adversary in Pittsburgh. A villain. And this 6'1", 215-pound receiver channeled an entire fanbase's fury in lurking over him, WWE-style. He he was fined, suspended, whatever. Smith-Schuster was also promptly offered free drinks, free food, free parking, free anything he'd ever want in this city.
A star was born.
"That's when my whole life changed," Smith-Schuster says. "This city shows so much love. Unbelievable. Wherever I go, it's all love. I can be in a bad neighborhood, and everyone's on my side. That's just how it is around here."
Here's the thing: Burfict wasn't his first victim.
Growing up, rugby was his true love.
During one preseason rugby game, he clotheslined a kid.
The scene was mayhem, with the benches clearing and that kid's parents cussing out Smith-Schuster's parents. Smith-Schuster got suspended for the entire regular season with practically no debate. Of course, he returned for the playoffs and led his South Bay Spartans club team to a championship. He played for the Spartans six years in all, relishing the padless violence. Several colleges even recruited Smith-Schuster to play rugby, and his mom, Sammy Toa-Schuster, thinks he would've made this sport his No. 1 priority had he been offered a full scholarship.
That first year, Mom couldn't go anywhere in Pittsburgh without someone telling her Smith-Schuster was their hero for knocking out Burfict—"I've never seen anyone so happy to see someone get hit like that!" she says. Quite a different reaction from that rugby clothesline.
CINCINNATI, OH - DECEMBER 04: JuJu Smith-Schuster #19 of the Pittsburgh Steelers stands over Vontaze Burfict #55 of the Cincinnati Bengals after a hit during the second half at Paul Brown Stadium on December 4, 2017 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
She tried to apologize to the other kid's parents that day, but they weren't having it. Maybe because, as she recalls, the kid was sent to the hospital.
Smith-Schuster is different than everything we're trained to think about the NFL wide receiver.
He loved playing defense on his Long Beach Polytechnic (California) high school football team, too, and was ranked by Rivals as the No. 2 safety prospect in the class of 2014 nationally, just ahead of Pro Bowl Jets safety Jamal Adams. That's why he loves blocking today, the grunt work that most receivers equate to cleaning toilets. Smith-Schuster loves beelining toward a player who has 30 pounds on him—the challenge, the violence. Blocking brings him back to playing safety, to rugby. It's no shock he was carded all the time, with opposing parents always yelling, "Why is he playing? Take him out!"
When the other team saw Smith-Schuster warming up, Mom could hear all the whispers: "Oh my gosh. He's here. He's here."
"They were afraid of this guy," Sammy says. "And if you see the other team, they're huge. They're bigger than him."
Smith-Schuster remembers the clothesline well and makes no apologies. As he explains, he went low on someone who was smaller than him, which meant his forearm naturally lodged underneath the kid's head and, uh, in his words, "choked him." Thus, the mayhem. He's still convinced everyone on the other team went berserk just so he'd get kicked out, too. One thing he says is certain: This is the Samoan in him. Such heritage runs deep in his mother's genes, and his stepdad is also Samoan.
It's as if a menacing, yoked rugby player doing the (slightly terrifying) Haka ritual was suddenly dropped into an NFL Sunday.
Says Smith-Schuster: "I was around all Polynesians my whole life. That made me a more mean, physical person."
Adds Mom, "It's just that Samoan warrior side."
to USC (27-13) to the pros (23-12-1).
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