Pitt alum Tyler Boyd takes a swipe at Pittsburgh Steelers receiver George Pickens as his Bengals prepare to visit Acrisure Stadium. Damontae Kazee’s suspension is upheld for the remainder of the regular season. T.J. Watt seems baffled that some Steelers aren’t responding to Mike Tomlin.

Jaromir Jagr is still playing hockey in the Czech Republic, and Robert Morris’ hoops team enjoys an exciting win.

All that in Thursday’s “First Call.”

Boyd picks at Pickens

Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tyler Boyd has taken shots at his hometown Steelers before.

Now the former Pitt Panther and Clairton Bear is directing his criticism at wide receiver George Pickens. When asked about the wave of attention being paid to Pickens’ failure to block downfield and chase down an interception during Saturday’s loss to the Indianapolis Colts, Boyd laid into Pickens — and the Steelers’ locker room.

“It just shows the lack of camaraderie that’s over there,” Boyd said via a video posted by ESPN.com’s Ben Baby. “I can’t really talk for anybody, but when things ain’t going well, you’ve still got to perform at a high level and do what you can to help your team. … When things ain’t going good, that’s when your true colors show. I like to be the same player week in, week out, whether it’s going good or bad for me.”

Watt left wondering

The NFL Network’s Rich Eisen has admitted to being a full-on honk for Mike Tomlin. In recent weeks, Eisen has gotten so verbose in his support for the embattled Steelers coach that he has had some very pointed words and spirited back-and-forth barbs with Steelers fans and, um, “certain” media members who dared to criticize the deified Coach T.

But after doing play-by-play for the Steelers’ loss in Indianapolis, the Steelers were so bad and showed such little effort (see Pickens’ examples above), Eisen went so far as to apologize for previously telling some Steelers fans that they were “out of their fracking’ minds” for wanting the Steelers to fire or trade Tomlin after the season.

Eisen made those comments during his talk show on Monday. However, what was more interesting than that was a story that Eisen relayed about a pre-broadcast meeting with outside linebacker T.J. Watt in which Watt said that Tomlin still is a “dynamic” leader. But he also insisted that some younger players on this team are refusing to hear the message.

“T.J. Watt said it was ‘wild’ to him that some of the players, upon hearing Tomlin’s (messaging in team meetings) don’t respond in a way on (the) field — or on a practice field. He used that word. It’s ‘wild’ that some of them don’t want to practice in the way that everybody is supposed to practice,” Eisen relayed.

Then Eisen said Watt spoke to a larger social issue.

“T.J. Watt also said that the younger generation takes criticism personally. He didn’t call it a problem. I just inferred it was,” Eisen said.

I’m sure that inference is accurate. And it’s equally “wild” that players such as Watt, Cameron Heyward and Minkah Fitzpatrick also can’t reach, don’t want to try to reach, haven’t felt the need to reach, or have been rebuffed when trying to get these players to fall in line.

It’s hard to lead when no one wants to follow. And we’ve all called Fitzpatrick, Heyward and Watt “great leaders” on the Steelers in the past. But maybe leading by example isn’t enough. Or if they’ve tried to lead in other ways off the field, the message isn’t getting through.

Just like it isn’t for Tomlin.

So the Steelers either need a few better leaders or a lot more players who are willing to follow in their footsteps