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James Harrison’s streak of five consecutive Pro Bowl seasons began when Mike Tomlin took over as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2007. The tight end won his second Super Bowl ring and the only NFL Defensive Player of the Year award under Tomlin.<\/p>\n
But Harrison doesn’t believe Tomlin belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame after voluntarily ending his 19-season career with the Steelers. Harrison made the comments on Friday’s episode of his show “Deebo & Joe,” which he co-hosts with former Steelers and Cleveland Browns quarterback Joe Haden.<\/p>\n
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Haden, a three-year Pro Bowler who played for Tomlin from 2017 to 21, asked the question, “Is coach T a Hall of Fame coach, in your opinion?”<\/p>\n
Harrison responded with a two-letter answer: “No.”<\/p>\n
[<\/strong>Get more Steelers news: Pittsburgh team feed<\/strong>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Surprised, Haden said, “Okay. Now, yeah, that’s really crazy.”<\/p>\n That’s when Harrison dove into his explanation:<\/p>\n “He hasn’t made disciples,” said Harrison. “You’re telling me you’re a Hall of Fame coach, but no one followed you? … He’s the only coach who’s coached for so long and doesn’t have any drugs, bro.”<\/p>\n Harrison was critical of the fact that during Tomlin’s nearly ten years in Pittsburgh, he didn’t have a single assistant transition from his staff to a head coaching position in the league.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n “I’m not going to nominate him for the Hall of Fame because he’s bad at hiring offensive coordinators,” said Haden, who clearly disagreed with Harrison on this issue.<\/p>\n Harrison did not back down. In fact, he even speculated that Tomlin stopped bringing in high-level consultants to focus on him.<\/p>\n “Is it light enough to walk around?” Harrison said.<\/p>\n “You have to be aware, a lot of coaches, when they get this head coach thing, it’s a lot of ego that goes with that. … Now, a head coach, dude, the measurement of greatness, it’s not based on that personal experience and the relationship you have with them. It’s all about what you’ve done as a coach. Did you get championships?”<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Haden replied, “What about winning and losing?”<\/p>\n Tomlin, after all, amassed 193 regular-season wins, tied with Chuck Noll for the most by a head coach in Steelers history. However, he was 8-12 in the playoffs and lost his last seven postseason games.<\/p>\n This is where Harrison is headed with his argument.<\/p>\n “If you look at the greats, the all-time greats, like everybody’s saying right now, nobody has a bad season record,” Harrison said.<\/p>\n Haden insists that Tomlin is a Hall of Fame coach because he brought the Super Bowl to the Steel City and kept Pittsburgh in the running for the championship. The Steelers won eight AFC North titles and never had a losing season under Tomlin.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Just a month ago, Harrison was here again. He played Tomlin from 2007 to 12 but apparently wasn’t too impressed.<\/p>\n “As much as I hate to say this, I’ve never been a person who thinks coach Tomlin is a great coach,” Harrison said on the Dec. 1, following the Steelers’ Week 13 loss to the Buffalo Bills that featured “Fire Tomlin” chants.<\/p>\n Harrison continued at the time: “I thought he was a great coach. … A great coach gets you to play your best. And right now, the players we have on that team, I’ve seen them play, I know they can do it. I’ve seen them do it.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n “And they don’t play according to their potential. And a good coach makes you play beyond your potential.”<\/p>\n The Steelers bounced back from that loss to the Bills and won the AFC North before one more playoff appearance and Tomlin’s subsequent resignation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" James Harrison’s streak of five consecutive Pro Bowl seasons began when Mike Tomlin took over as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2007. The tight end won his second Super Bowl ring and the only NFL Defensive Player of the Year award under Tomlin. But Harrison doesn’t believe Tomlin belongs in the Pro Football …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2800,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2798\/revisions\/2800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}This isn’t the first time Harrison has downplayed Tomlin’s success<\/h2>\n