Steelers Now
PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf is an old-school type of wide receiver. He’s the son of a former NFL offensive lineman, so it’s not surprising that he’s not afraid to get his nose dirty.
He even served as a gunner in the team’s Week 14 win over the Baltimore Ravens. It’s not often that you see a No. 1 wide receiver do that. There’s no divan behavior with Metcalf.
Metcalf displayed his physicality in Monday night’s win over the Miami Dolphins when he tossed Minkah Fitzpatrick to the side on his 28-yard run-and-catch touchdown.
Metcalf just chucked aside Fitzpatrick, stepped through a second tackler and stiff-armed a third on his way to the end zone. His eye-popping touchdown earned him NFL Network host Kyle Brandt’s Angry Runs Scepter.
Metcalf thinks the game is losing its physicality aspect. The days of Hines Ward throwing blind side blocks are long over.
“I don’t like what football is becoming. Yeah, it’s becoming soft,” Metcalf recently said on The Christian Kuntz Podcast. “So that’s all I’m gonna say. I knoW [the NFL] fine folks for saying too much.”
Following the Week 13 game against the Buffalo Bills, Metcalf was fined $14,491 by the NFL after he celebrated Jaylen Warren’s 1-yard touchdown by holding his right hand to the ground in the direction of Benford — giving a signal that the Buffalo cornerback was “too small” in a celebration first popularized in the NBA.
Metcalf was previously fined $12,172 for putting his fingers in the facemask of Green Bay Packers linebacker Quay Walker in Week 8.
Metcalf thinks the NFL has lost its grittiness and toughness. It’s just soft on several levels.
“I’ve gotten fined for pancaking and a guy on the opposite side. Like, if the run was running to the right side and I’m on the left, I pancake the guy on the left, they fine me for that,” Metcalf said. “It’s crazy. But like, I can’t block nobody. {The referee] was like, ‘It’s away from the play.’ I’m like, ‘Anything could happen. He could reverse field right, come over there.’ They were like, Yeah, it’s still away from the play.”
With that kind of mindset, Metcalf thinks he’s a perfect fit in a blue-collar city like Pittsburgh.
“It’s straight blue-collar that’s what I f*** with. Y’all come to work you don’t care about complaints or oh the weather may be bad or any of that,” Metcalf said.” Y’all are coming to work and that’s what I like the ruggedness about it. They’re real genuine people.”
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: DK Metcalf Has One Major Issue with Today’s NFL
