JuJu Smith-Schuster wants to win so support staff gets bonuses
JuJu Smith-Schuster has an unusual motivation to make the playoffs. It isn’t just that he loves winning – which he does. Instead, the Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver knows that a trip to the postseason can make a financial impact on the members of the organization who work tirelessly behind the scenes.
The Steelers got their first win of the season this past Sunday, a 27-3 win over the Cincinnati Bengals. Now 1-3 on the season, Smith-Schuster thinks that the Steelers now have a little momentum in what is a wide-open AFC North.
Smith-Schuster, who was the youngest player in NFL history to 2,500 career receiving yards, said “I’d rather talk about rings than records.” But while the third-year wide receiver wants a Super Bowl championship, he realizes that making the postseason can be a bit of a windfall for the support staff around the team.
Smith-Schuster, who is partnering with Tide to celebrate the league's 100th anniversary with an ad campaign dubbed “N-F-L” (“Not-For-Laundry"), is motivated so that trainers and the operations staff get their due. He sees them as the tireless workers who handle the players' bumps and bruises, set up the field and also clear the locker room. It is the thankless job of those in operations that allow the players to focus on winning.
“I think if you work hard every day that everyone should get a piece of the pie. When you go to the playoffs, not only do players get paid, trainers get paid and people who work their butts off, who are there day and night, they all get paid,” Smith-Schuster told FOX Business on Tuesday. “That’s what I want, I want everybody happy but not only that, to get that extra pay, you have to make the playoffs.”
It is an intriguing motivation and one rarely if ever heard around the NFL.
A Pro Bowl selection last year in just his second season in the league, Smith-Schuster is thoughtful about the impact of winning and losing. He acknowledges that he wants championships and titles and of course has a desire to stack up big numbers.
But he wants the people who work tirelessly around the Steelers facility to reap the benefits of the playoffs and the postseason. The playoff bonuses are significant for the staff.
“People don’t know that a lot,” Smith-Schuster said of the bonus payments for the operations staff. “I think those people work just as hard, coming in at 4 a.m. to get everything set up every day, they stay later than us. Yes, we go out there and take more hits to our body but they are working just as much as we are too. That’s why it is important to me that they get their bonuses.”
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