The Pittsburgh Steelers are on top of the AFC North, with an 8-2 record, entering Week 12 against a (2-8) Cleveland Browns team with not much to play for but pride. Entering this game, the Steelers have gone undefeated since starting Russell Wilson over Justin Fields, but then, anything can happen in the NFL, and the Browns might make things interesting. Speaking of interesting, Steelers defensive tackle Cam Heyward also told a story about tight end Darnell Washington and the team finding a snake in the locker room before their Week 10 game versus the Commanders.
In the latest episode of Inside the NFL, the veteran DT talked about finding the snake and his teammates’ reactions to the reptilian guest, and when it came to the TE, Heyward laughed.
“Darnell Washington wanted to eat it,” he said, via this clip shared by the show’s official account on X, formerly Twitter.
The snake in the Steelers locker room
Moreover, the DT had already talked about this snake story before on his podcast “Not Just Football with Cam Heyward,” sans Darnell Washington’s culinary preferences, but revealing how the reptilian discovery figured into the Steelers’ comeback 28-27 victory over the Commanders later that day.
“Before the game, I go out, warm up, I come back in. Everybody was a little bit shocked when I came in. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ There’s a snake in our locker room,” Heyward said, via Tim Capurso of Sports Illustrated.
Another surprise was where the snake had emerged from.
“And it was coming from [Russell Wilson’s] locker,” he added. “Everybody was like thrown for a loop. A snake in our locker room!”
While the snake eventually slithered away despite the team’s best attempts to wrangle it away from the locker room, coach Mike Tomlin found a way to weave it into his pre-game pep talk.
“Mike T was like, ‘We can make a big deal about a small locker room… There being a snake. But it doesn’t matter. We still got to win. So it kind of just played into our mantra,” Heyward continued.
Snake? Snake!
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Whatever nerves remained from the snake discovery may have contributed to the Steelers going down by ten in the third quarter.
However, the Steelers proved their mettle and came back to win, thanks to Wilson’s go-ahead 32-yard touchdown pass to new trade acquisition Mike Williams. With the victory, they improved to 7-2, with a 4-1 record on the road.
Still, the snake in the locker room at Northwest Stadium, formerly FedEx Field, may have been just part of its problems.
Besides the snake, pieces of the stadium almost hit Jalen Hurts, while the Commanders and the Giants had to play with broken showers in 2023 thanks to the hot water system’s failure.
However, the Commanders hope to open a new stadium by 2030.