Since his retirement, former Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison has become a fixture on the sports talk television circuit. And it would appear given the opportunity, Harrison doesn’t hesitate to throw shade at his former team. Hard to blame him. Honestly, what else would any of these shows have Harrison on to talk about?
This time around, Harrison was on the Fox Sports 1 show “Undisputed” and made the case the one Super Bowl that Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin has won (and the one he went to and lost) were centered on a team built by his predecessor, Bill Cowher.
Tomlin inherited a team led by quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who already had a Super Bowl win in his young career. Tomlin got a Super Bowl win in his second year as head coach with a team almost solely made up of players already on the roster when he was hired.
As hard as it is to see a former player like Harrison disparage the Steelers, you can’t really argue with his reasoning. Tomlin rode the momentum Cowher created about as far as he could. But there is no denying that Tomlin’s track record since the Steelers’ Super Bowl loss to the Green Bay Packers after the 2010 season has been less than stellar.
But I want to pass the question off to you: Did Tomlin just ride the coattails of Cowher and fail to maintain the level of play, or is it that the rest of the league caught up?
