from Tim Benz of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,

“We were a very tight-knit team, and I didn’t see that this year, almost from Day 1,” Rutherford said, referencing the championship teams of 2016 and 2017. “I didn’t see a point where our guys came together as a team.”

Often, a comment like that from a general manager can be viewed as an indictment of the coach — that his bench boss failed to bring the team’s roster together to tug on the same rope.

Instead, Rutherford decided to deflect the blame onto the players for failing to heed his coach’s message, praising his coach for the job he did keeping the locker room together to the degree that he was capable.

For his part, Sullivan acknowledged the assertion that chemistry was a problem last year.

“I do agree with it. It’s something that we’ve talked about,” Sullivan said when Madden broached the chemistry concerns. “We just didn’t quite come together as we hoped we would.”

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