Steelers, Snoop Dogg Hope Addition Thru Subtraction Is a Hit, but It's Unlikely

Snoop Dogg thinks the Steelers are better off without Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell.

Now there's an intro sentence I never imagined I would type.

"I don't remember us winning anything with AB and Le'Veon because we would always get to that point and one of them would be missing," the longtime Steelers fan, game show host, entrepreneur and (when he can squeeze it in) rapper said on FS1's Undisputed last week. "One of them would be missing in action due to injury, infraction or something would always have us walking with one foot. …

"And we would never beat the Patriots. We couldn't beat the Jags. ... Why we can't beat these teams that are in the way of us getting to the Super Bowl with this superteam and these super athletes? ... I felt like it was something that was broken with the chemistry."

Mr. Dogg raises some valid and interesting points. But he's missing the bigger picture.

You would think that the man who once released an album titled Ego Trippin' and has another one on the way called I Wanna Thank Me would side with guys like Bell and Brown in their feuds with Steelers management over money and/or respect. But Snoop is now 47 years old and pals around with Martha Stewart types. Age and prosperity take even the coolest of us on a lifelong journey from "Gin and Juice" to "Get off My Lawn!"

Snoop, like many Steelers fans, hopes that getting rid of their best players will make the team better. Addition Thru Subtraction sounds like another album title, and it also makes great midday sports talk wisdom.

But in the real world, teams don't get better by getting rid of their best players.

"Chemistry" is the watchword at Steelers OTAs, which is understandable after a season and offseason of holdouts, defections, locker larceny and internet beefs. Every player who came within range of a microphone in recent weeks was asked about the team's chemistry or atmosphere. All of them agreed that everything is just peachy.

"The chemistry is on point," JuJu Smith-Schuster said last week, per ESPN.com's Jeremy Fowler. "Everyone is on the same page. Everyone is communicating. There's really no—how do you say?—drama in our locker room." 

"I can say they have good chemistry here," newcomer Steve Nelson told Hunter Homistek of DKPittsburghSports.com. "Everybody's in tune with each other."

"It's a lot of great leadership in the locker room," fellow newcomer Donte Moncrief told Missi Matthews on the Steelers' official website. "Even on the field, in the lunchroom, everywhere. You can tell this is a good locker room. Everybody's positive and everybody wanna win."

Keith Srakocic/Associated Press

"Really we're a tight-knit group," said James Conner, per Fowler. "That locker room is incredible. With all the guys in there, the camaraderie, everybody loves each other, really. People might think it's chaos, but it's not like that at all."

Any more quotes of Steelers players blowing sunshine and we'll need to break out the SPF 60 lotion just to get through this article. 

Things are going so well that Ben Roethlisberger invited several of his receivers and running backs down to Georgia for a lakeside retreat/bonding session in May. It's something he's done in the past, even including Brown in 2015, but perhaps this time the warm and fuzzy feelings will stick. 

You get the idea: Everything is s'mores and campfire singalongs at Steelers HQ. If that translated directly into winning, 32 teams would go undefeated every year.

Just once, it would be great to hear a player respond to an offseason softball question about "chemistry" or "culture" by declaring he is surrounded by selfish dirt bags who don't give a cuss about winning as long as the checks clear. But that never happens. It's usually not true, for one thing. More importantly, OTAs are a time for optimism and reassurances that everyone is in great shape, ready to work and hap-hap-happy to be here.

Of course, the Steelers locker room chemistry and atmosphere had better be great, considering all that they sacrificed to improve it. If Steelers teammates were still chucking footballs in anger and rummaging through each other's belongings after jettisoning Bell and Brown, it might be time to check for thumbtacks in the bottom of their cleats.

Team chemistry is at least twice as important as the analytics gurus on your Twitter feed think it is, though not nearly half as important as the guys at the corner tavern (or your favorite aging rapper) think it is, so it's encouraging to hear that everyone in Pittsburgh is feeling the love. As Snoop Dogg noted, it's hard to beat the Patriots or win important late-season games when players are AWOL or not at their best because they were never with the program.

But it's hard to even get to play in important late-season games without players like Brown and Bell. The NFL is full of happy, cohesive, dedicated teams destined to have forgettable seasons due to lack of talent. The Steelers must hope they are not one of those teams.

That's why all eyes and ears are on Smith-Schuster and Conner, the in-house replacements for Brown and Bell. Both are known commodities: Conner gained 1,470 scrimmage yards and scored 13 touchdowns during Bell's holdout last season. Smith-Schuster caught 111 passes for 1,426 yards—better production than Brown.

Both can play. Both can also say the right things.

"It's not about a No. 1 guy," Smith-Schuster told reporters when asked about his new role. "Yeah, you have a No. 1 quarterback, a No. 1 running back. But ... it's a collective game. The only way you move the ball is if all 11 make plays. That's what it's going to take to win the Super Bowl."

"Everything is not just competition and who can make the most plays on the field," Conner told ESPN's Fowler. "It's important to be a good person and have good character."

Smith-Schuster and Conner know they must push back against the perception that the Steelers are a fractured organization, so they may be leaning extra hard into the team-first platitudes. And the unselfishness sounds refreshing after Bell's contract hassles and Brown's eccentricities. But Smith-Schuster is now that No. 1 guy, whether he thinks that way or not. And on Sunday afternoons, everything really will be just about competition and who can make the most plays on the field.

Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press

The Steelers cannot just replace Brown's 104 receptions and 15 touchdowns with good vibes. And as impressive as Conner was in relief of Bell, he was missing in action due to injury (to coin a phrase) when the Steelers needed him for much of December.

Right now, the Steelers look like the second-most talented team in the AFC North, behind the Browns. As an 9-6-1 team that got weaker in the offseason, they appear far removed from the Super Bowl conversation.

Pittsburgh needs players who can make an entrance and rip stuff up more than it needs chemistry. If Smith-Schuster can't successfully assume the role of a No. 1 receiver, if no real No. 2 receiver emerges to lighten his load, if too much is asked of Conner or anything else makes the Steelers look less like a superteam with super players, no one is going to care about how cheerful the atmosphere was in May.

Not even The Doggfather.

Mike Tanier covers the NFL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @MikeTanier.