PITTSBURGH (AP) ¡ª  as James Conner Joe Gilliam Jersey , Jaylen Samuels and Benny Snell Jr. talked. Words such as ¡°we¡± and ¡°us¡± and ¡°relationships¡± and ¡°my guys.¡±No personal agendas. No campaigning for more touches or playing time. No talk about contracts or specific roles. The Pittsburgh Steelers running backs just don¡¯t see the point of personal pronouns.¡°We¡¯re trying to be the best running back group in the world,¡± Samuels said.One that¡¯s ready to escape Le¡¯Veon Bell¡¯s shadow for good.The versatile and dynamic three-time Pro Bowler¡¯s long goodbye ended in March when he signed a four-year, $52 million deal with the New York Jets. For Conner and Samuels, that means no more keeping one eye on the playbook and another on the door to the locker room waiting for Bell to step through.He never did last fall, though that didn¡¯t stop the seemingly endless debate over his intentions and his future, discussions the teammates he left behind tried to avoid even as they combined to put up numbers that rivaled Bell¡¯s at the peak of his considerable powers.Conner and Samuels put up 1,925 yards and 16 touchdowns in 2018. Bell had 1,946 total yards and 11 touchdowns in 2017. Oh, and Conner and Samuels did it at a tenth of the price and an even smaller fraction of the drama.¡°We didn¡¯t know what the situation with Le¡¯Veon was going to be last year,¡± Samuels said. ¡°We just had to come to work every day like he was going to show up. Now that he¡¯s not here, we¡¯re going to do the same thing. Just going to push even harder because we know the pressure is on us. We¡¯ve got to get the job done.¡±One they¡¯re focused on doing together.While Conner made the Pro Bowl after running for 973 yards and a dozen touchdowns and adding 497 yards receiving, he also missed time at various points because of minor injuries. Samuels ¡ª a rookie fifth-round pick last fall ¡ª filled in capably, including a memorable performance in a victory over the New England Patriots in which he racked up 172 total yards.Conner spent a portion of the winter bulking up in an effort to hold up better under the wear and tear of a 16-game season. His biceps and his shoulders look as if someone inserted a hose into them and just started puffing away, not stopping until his arms and neck appear to be bursting out from under his shoulder pads.¡°I don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on with him,¡± Samuels said with a laugh and a shake of his head.Conner is reluctant to discuss specifics about how much weight he¡¯s added. He¡¯s also reticent to declare himself the starter. Entering his third year as a pro, he¡¯s become well-versed in how fast life can come at you in the NFL. He joined the Steelers as a third-round pick in 2017.Sixteen months later he found himself lining up behind quarterback Ben Roethlisberger when Bell opted to work on his music and his tan rather than sign his franchise tag and show up for work.Still, all those yards and all those touchdowns didn¡¯t stop Pittsburgh from taking Snell in the fourth round of the draft following a record-breaking career at Kentucky. Conner didn¡¯t take it personally. This is how things work.¡°Coach (Mike Tomlin) told us a while ago that he¡¯s trying to replace us every year,¡± Conner said. ¡°Didn¡¯t mean that in a bad way. Doesn¡¯t mean we¡¯re not doing our job. It¡¯s just you know, there¡¯s always a young buck up and coming. You¡¯ve seen the talent that Jaylen got. Seen the talent that Benny has. All those guys are talented, really good running backs.¡±Samuels excelled catching passes out of the backfield at North Carolina State ¡ª where he left as the school¡¯s all-time leader in receptions ¡ª and spent the offseason refining his route running.The Steelers are looking for ways to have Conner and Samuels on the field at the same time, even if that means moving Samuels into more of an H-back role that would allow him the freedom to move around in search offavorable matchups.¡°We¡¯ve both got unique skillsets,¡± Samuels said. ¡°James can do a lot of running and I can do a lot of catching but we can also feed off each other. That was just Year One. Year Two we hope to build off that, exceed and make some noise.¡±They¡¯re not the only ones. Snell left Kentucky with a year of eligibility left after breaking every important rushing record in school history. He didn¡¯t panic when he didn¡¯t hear his name called until the third day of the draft. He knows how well the Steelers develop mid-round picks. The rise of Conner and Samuels offers tangible proof.¡°Those are my guys, those are my brothers,¡± Snell said.A bond they will lean on as the post-Le¡¯Veon Bell era begins Terry Bradshaw Jersey , one more focused on sharing the burden rather than hogging the ball or the limelight.¡°It¡¯s bigger than making plays on the field,¡± Conner said. ¡°Like, football is like a game of life. So the friendships and the relationships we have off the field, it helps us on the field. Everything is not just competition and who can make plays on the field. It¡¯s important to be a good person, have good character.¡± After all the points were piled up in the second-highest scoring season in NFL history, the popular prototype for a head coach became predictably clear.Teams on the annual coaching carousel this winter searched for their own version of prodigy Sean McVay, the creative play caller and quarterback whisperer who took the Los Angeles Rams to the Super Bowl in his second season at the helm.An Associated Press study of coaching staffs for the 2018 season found only four minorities in the stepping-stone positions of offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, just 7.1 percent of 56 jobs. That lack of minority coaches in the pipeline helped contribute to the NFL¡¯s sharpest-ever one-year drop in minority head coaches, causing concern among advocates for diversity, who declared there has been unsatisfactory progress 16 years after the Rooney Rule was implemented.The rule named after late Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney was put in place before the 2003 hiring season and now requires all teams to interview at least one minority candidate for any head coach or general manager vacancy. But the AP study found that nearly three-quarters of all minority assistants were either running backs, receivers, defensive backs coaches, or in lower-level positions like quality control coaches ¡ª jobs that historically have not directly led to head coaching opportunities.So when five black head coaches were fired this past season ¡ª Todd Bowles (Jets), Hue Jackson (Cleveland), Vance Joseph (Denver), Marvin Lewis (Cincinnati) and Steve Wilks (Arizona) ¡ª only one of the eight overall openings went to a minority with New England defensive assistant Brian Flores set to be hired by Miami after the Super Bowl.Thus, the ranks of minority head coaches in a league whose players are nearly 70 percent black has been reduced from eight to four in just one year. Not since the first year of the Rooney Rule will a season begin with fewer minority head coaches in the NFL: Flores, Anthony Lynn (Chargers), Ron Rivera (Carolina) and Mike Tomlin (Pittsburgh).To be fair, none of the firing or hiring decisions made this offseason was viewed in a vacuum as unjust. Since the start of the 2016 season, Bowles, Jackson, Joseph, Lewis and Wilks combined for a record of 50-132-2, a woeful winning percentage of .277. Collectively Louis Lipps Jersey , however, this development has prompted diversity advocates to call on the NFL to consider changes that could help ensure this is a blip rather than a trend.¡°Dan¡¯s proposal was to slow things down and see what coaches you want and try to come up with a minority candidate or candidates that fit that criteria, and people are not doing that now,¡± said Hall of Fame member Tony Dungy, who was one of two minority head coaches in the NFL when the Rooney Rule was enacted in December 2002.The success of McVay, who was hired at age 30 by the Los Angeles Rams and turned a four-win team into a Super Bowl participant in just two seasons, might have accidentally had some effect.McVay¡¯s 35-year-old quarterbacks coach Zac Taylor is expected be the next head coach in Cincinnati despite only five games of experience as an interim offensive coordinator in the NFL.Matt LaFleur, 39, replaced Mike McCarthy as head coach in Green Bay with just two years of offensive coordinator experience on his resume. Kliff Kingsbury got the top job in Arizona shortly after being fired as a college head coach at Texas Tech.¡°I think it is cyclical,¡± Dungy said. ¡°I also think a lot of owners don¡¯t know or understand what goes into being a successful head coach. If I coach my quarterback really well I will have a good team, of course, and they feel the guy who coaches the quarterback really will be a successful head coach, but we have seen that¡¯s not necessarily the case. For every Doug Pederson or Sean McVay, who are great, we see (many) who don¡¯t work out.¡±The hunt for the next McVay is similar to what happened starting more than a decade ago when coaches with ties to Dungy and his Tampa 2 defensive system were the hot commodities. Four of Dungy¡¯s former defensive assistants ¡ª all minorities ¡ª went on to get head coaching jobs: Tomlin, Herm Edwards, Lovie Smith and Leslie Frazier.Raheem Morris also got a head coaching job after joining the staff with Tampa Bay after Dungy was fired, and Dungy¡¯s former offensive coordinator in Indianapolis, Jim Caldwell, got head coaching opportunities with the Colts and Detroit Lions.After a season in which the four conference finalists were the four highest-scoring teams in the league, the emphasis is firmly on offense.¡°Ratings are up. Points scored are higher. People love offense. The rules have gone to offense. So there¡¯s a bias toward offensive head coaches right now,¡± Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper said, while praising the NFL¡¯s efforts to enhance ground-level opportunity and aim for more minorities in the paths that typically lead to head coach positions.Of the 19 minority head coaches in the league since 2002, 14 had primarily defensive backgrounds including Bowles, Joseph Alejandro Villanueva Jersey , Lewis and Wilks. In 2015, 17 of the 32 head coaches in the NFL came from defensive backgrounds. This year, 20 of 32 will be offense-minded. In 2015, six of the seven new hires had defensive backgrounds. In the four offseasons since then, 21 of the 28 head coaches hired came from offensive backgrounds.¡°For whatever reason, the opportunity for minority coaches seems to be stronger on the defensive side of the ball and the coaches that have advanced to become head coaches from the minority perspective, most of them have come from the defensive side,¡± said Steelers president Art Rooney II, son of Dan Rooney. ¡°It¡¯s something we need to look at: ¡®How do we improve the opportunities on the offensive side for minority coaches?'¡±There were 11 minority defensive coordinators in the league in 2018, along with Flores, who has called signals this season for New England but was listed officially as the linebackers coach. But only one offensive coordinator (Eric Bieniemy of Kansas City) was a minority. Tampa Bay recently doubled that total by hiring Byron Leftwich, who started 2018 as one of only three minority quarterbacks coaches in the league before also becoming interim offensive coordinator in Arizona.Of the 20 offensive head coaches in the league, 16 served as offensive coordinators before getting hired and 17 spent time as quarterbacks coaches or played the position in college or the pros. That is a path that only a handful of minorities are on.¡°I think teams are looking too much at the play callers versus a guy that can be the CEO of an organization, a face of the organization, a guy that can lead a football team and get the most out of his players,¡± said Lynn, who spent 14 seasons as a running backs coach before serving as an interim offensive coordinator for Buffalo the year before getting hired by the Chargers. ¡°That has nothing to do with play calling. That has everything to do with a man¡¯s character and leadership and guys willing to follow him. You have some excellent play callers that we¡¯ve proven over and over again that can¡¯t be a head coach in this league. We¡¯ve proven that. It¡¯s just a change of thinking in the hiring process.¡±An AP review of all of the coaching staffs in the league at the start of the 2018 season, excluding administrative assistants, data analysts and strength and conditioning coaches for the purpose of streamlining the count, found that 34.8 percent of the coaches were minorities, 216 of 621.Breaking out primary position coaches of running backs, wide receivers and defensive backs, the number of minorities in 2018 was 69.6 percent, 71 of 102. But Lynn is one of the rare head coaches whose career path was primarily as a running backs coach. Cleveland¡¯s Freddie Kitchens, who is white John Stallworth Jersey , is the only other current head coach in the league whose primary stepping-stone job was as a running backs coach.¡°If you¡¯re really, really committed to giving minorities opportunities, then you must build a pipeline. To build a pipeline you need to bring in minority coaches at the quarterbacks and quality control spots,¡± said John Wooten, executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, an organization that works to foster racial diversity in the NFL. ¡°There are so few quarterback coaches and coordinators at the college level. Consequently, because of that lack, you don¡¯t have the area to build from, so you have to go build it yourself. That¡¯s what plans we have, to do it that way.¡±Wooten plans to meet with NFL officials at the upcoming scouting combine to discuss getting teams to commit to hiring more minorities for entry-level jobs that can eventually lead to coordinator or head coaching opportunities.The league announced in December what it said were stronger provisions for the Rooney Rule . Among several changes, clubs now must interview at least one candidate of diversity from a list compiled by an advisory panel, or a candidate not currently employed by the team. The league is also requiring teams to keep records and provide them when asked by the commissioner.¡°We believe more can be done to support the Rooney Rule in the interest of creating an inclusive opportunity platform with the intent that consideration, inclusion and consistency will become rooted in hiring practices,¡± NFL football operations chief Troy Vincent said.Wooten and others, however, stopped short of endorsing an explicit extension of the Rooney Rule to coordinator jobs, preferring to maintain an atmosphere of autonomy for head coaches in selecting their staffs.For Lynn, too, there¡¯s perspective about the tenuous nature of the profession amid the push for more opportunity.¡°I just think it¡¯s one of those years. Some guys got let go. It happens every year. I like to look at it as just coaches. I don¡¯t like to look at it as black and white coaches,¡± Lynn said last week at the Pro Bowl. ¡°I think we¡¯ve got to get some good minority coaches coming up through the pipes, and I think there are some really good ones. They need some more opportunities.¡±