Perception is a tricky thing. Everybody processes information in a different way, so 100 different people could interpret a sentence in 100 different ways. That’s what makes being a leader so tricky, because you have to customize your message, to some degree, for every person under you. The same strategy isn’t going to work equally as effectively for every person.
Apparently, a couple of former Pittsburgh Steelers players—you know their names—were rather sensitive to certain approaches, especially early in their career, bringing up old lines that they took as slights and which they suggest continue to bother them today, even though they have tens of millions of dollars.