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Ben Roethlisberger is sorry for publicly calling out teammates. Unless he isn’t.

Roethlisberger’s recent mea culpa to Michele Tafoya of NBC carried with it a caveat that makes it seem like Ben isn’t really sorry at all.

“I wish I wouldn’t have done it,” Roethlisberger said regarding his decision to use his weekly radio show as a platform for criticizing a route that Antonio Brown ran late in a key loss to the Broncos. “Because obviously we saw what happened, and obviously it ruined a friendship and just got caught up in the emotion, the heat of the battle. But the other person I challenged that game was [receiver] James Washington. And I know people made a big deal about that. But James Washington texted, called me, and talked to me in person and thank[ed] me for that. And so the outside world was killing me for it, he thanked me and that’s all that really mattered.”

So why didn’t Brown react the same way?

“You’ll have to ask him,” Roethlisberger told Tafoya. “I’m not sure.”

The difference is obvious. Washington, a rookie, knows how his bread is buttered — and he’s willing to tolerate the knife, no matter how sharp and pointy it may be. Brown, an established veteran, felt no compulsion to go along to get along; indeed, it became his pretext for a power play aimed at getting out of Pittsburgh and, ultimately, getting more than $30 million in guaranteed money over the next two years.

It’s also obvious that Roethlisberger’s reliance on Washington’s reaction to the same behavior has become a not-so-subtle tool for making Brown seem unreasonable for reacting the way he did. So it’s not that Roethlisberger crossed a line, even though he did. It’s about the guy on the receiving end of the criticism not being able to realize that he should be saying “thank you” not “f–k you” in response.