News/views: LeBeau, Steelers have ‘mutual parting’

Dick LeBeau calls signals on the Steelers’ sideline during a Nov. 17 game this season in Nashville. — GETTY

BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC

News: Dick LeBeau has left the Steelers, according to the Urbana Daily Citizen in his native Ohio. He told the paper, “I’m resigning my position, not retiring,” and called it “a mutual parting.”

Views: So much for status quo this offseason.

LeBeau, 77, is nothing less than a legend with the Steelers’ franchise, not least of which was for presiding over two Super Bowl champions and dominating, innovative defenses. And he never should be the focus of singular blame for how far that defense fell the past three years. That had far more to do with a crumbling secondary and, preceding that, a lack of emphasis on the secondary in recent draft. The man had a tremendous run.