Harrison, good riddance!

If what his (now former) teammates are saying is true then I'm glad we cut that cancer out of the locker room.

He may very well be the difference for New England but this team will go infinitely farther with players who ACTUALLY want to be here.

So to James Harrison, thanks for the years to this team but...

 

Some serious conflicting feelings going on here. Everything Harrison did and helped us achieve. But I don't think there is a sane person out there, whether a Steeler fan or even a fan of the Patriots, that can condone what is now being reported. I figured there was some serious nonsense that wasn't being reported, but I never could have imagined everything that was going on. What Dupree said is spot on too, signing with the Patriots is just a slap in the face to Tomlin and the Rooneys. They supported him, and now we are seeing how much Tomlin was protecting his legacy in this city. None of this is about money or a better chance to win a last ring. His inactive game checks were more then New England is paying him, and his chances of winning a Super Bowl with the Patriots are in no way greater then with the Steelers. Quite probable he doesn't care what his legacy will be in Pittsburgh after his career is finally done, but it's a shame because this tarnishes, at least in my eyes, what was an incredible career of a once Steeler Icon.

 

No matter who's side you take or what you feel about Harrison this is an indictment of Mike Tomlin. If half of this stuff is true about what Harrison was doing, then my first question is who the hell is running this team? I'm guessing the FO is not too thrilled with what they are hearing. This never should have got this far. This never should have been allowed to happen. A player like Harrison should never be getting cut just before playoff time . This has been mismanaged from the start. I have to wonder if they actually used Harrison from the start would any of this be happening. If he was not good enough to use...then why the hell was he on our roster to begin with? If he was good enough to keep around , why were they allowing him to behave like this? Why weren't they playing him 10-20 snaps per game? No matter what you think of all of his or what the truth actually is... this is all on Tomlin for allowing it to happen. If this stuff went on in the work place, the guy in charge is the one that's gonna be in trouble.

 

Another Harrison is evil thread. We get it. throw it with the previous ones.

 

So I guess there was locker room drama all season long.

 

The only way to right this wrong is bring home # 7. And all will be good nuff said.

 

They kept JH92 on the roster so they had insurance or a fall back if Watt didn't play up to expectations as a rookie. Seems silly now with the benefit of hindsight, but they didn't know that in training camp/preseason. Plus Porter laid it out to JH92 before the season started, saying he was going to be used when needed. If he had a problem with that then he should spoken up before the season. But he probably thought this year would end up like last year, where he had to come in and save the day and get the majority of snaps, starting 7 games or so.

We all saw Watt's first game of the year vs Cleveland. Watt came out on fire, is that why JH92 then promptly asked for his release?? Probably, because he saw he wasn't going to unseat this guy. More than likely, Harrison was banking on the rookie to falter and he would play more significant snaps, instead of taking his coaches word that he is the "break glass in case of emergency" guy.

Watt played (and is playing) his butt off from the get go and instead of passing the torch, he couldn't accept the end was near. All athletes have an ego, so I can't blame JH92 for wanting to play or thinking he still can. But instead of becoming that veteran, mentoring teammate he chose to become a distraction. Would he really have been happy with 5-10 snaps a game?? No one knows. maybe they weren't playing him those 5-10 snaps because he was acting like a whiny ***** and they didn't want to cave to his demands while they are trying to develop the future at the position.

And enough with the Tomlin, Tomlin, Tomlin garbage. Where is Joey Porter's name in your rant? He's the position coach and in direct contact with JH92 every day. Why wasn't Porter doing more to smooth over the mess. You know why, because no one other than Harrison himself was going to smooth things over by accepting his role. Tomlin, Butler or Porter were not going to rein in a guy as stubborn as JH92.

As much as I loved it at the time, the sack in the waning moments of the KC game probably did more harm than good and just fed into his ego.

 

An indictment on tomlin? Such absolute bull****. First off tomlin doesn’t sign or cut players. That falls under Colbert’s job description. Tomlin has input, but the final call is Colbert’s and to some extent AR2.

Harrison like every other player on the team isn’t given anything nor does he deserve to be given anything. You have to earn it. That is done on the practice field, team meetings, film room etc. Assuming Dupree’s claims are true than tomlin did the right thing by benching Harrison/ inactive on game days. When a coach starts rewarding players for childish antics then it all falls apart. Harrison was given a shot and blew it. He’s got nobody to blame but himself.

 

Not ever visiting Ryan ,,true colors there man,true colors

 

Reports that have come out about a lot of his actions makes me think he is twisted. He was leaving the facility when he was inactivated, posting workout videos calling out his teammates when the staff did not want the players working out like him (hence causing his own injuries), missing meetings, not being the mentor he was brought back to be. Also he is on record calling the cheats what they are, cheaters.

So what does he do? He signs with the cheats.

When it first happened was like ok, so he signed with the cheats, he can sign with anyone he wants to.

But after these reports that are surfacing I hope he throws his back out. He is just being used by belicheat and will be gone. I have lost a lot of respect for Harrison.

 

To me that is the worst part of all of this crap. How do you turn your back on an injured teammate? Who does that? Kids do that, not adults. Good god does he have the mind of a child? This is really devastating to Steelers fans to find out a legend is nothing more than a plain old douche bag.

 

And when they use him and kick him to the curb he just can’t come rolling back to Pittsburgh and be treated like a hero. Things can never be the same. He has ruined that. It makes me sick to think someone can be so spiteful to throw away an entire career. The cheatriots win again by the fact that they took one of our superheroes and destroyed him. And he let them do it. Absolutely shameful.

 

Not getting all up in your face, but how do you know this? And how can you quantify Tomlin’s “input”? If the coach flat-out says to release a player, what’s Colbert going to do?

I’d guess Tomlin and Colbert were discussing the situation through the season; when Tomlin said enough is enough, Colbert pull out the knife.

 

That is an NFL general managers job. In short they build the team. They hire coaches, draft players, oversee scouting department, contract negotiations etc. Coaches can make recommendations, but the gm has final say. There's obviously one caveat to that, the owner.

A hands off owner trusts the people he hired and allows them to do their jobs. At the other end of the spectrum you have the Al Davis or Dan Snyder type of owner. Or in baseball George Steinbrenner. I should add there are instances where the coach also functions as the general manager(something of football operations is the title.) Darth Hoodie is one, Davis is another, but he took it to a whole new level with coach, gm, and part owner.



As a footnote I tend to believe AR2 is somewhere in the middle. Not micromanaging everything, but still involved and using his position as owner as the final say in some matters. I have no proof of that, but it makes sense when you think about the drafting of Jarvis Jones. I have trouble believing that every one of our coaches and scouts watched the film on Jarvis and missed the blatantly obvious.

 

These actions being reported don’t paint a very good picture of JH.

I’m still taking the work he put in for Pittsburgh and Lombardi he helped earn. Without him, nobody on here can be saying “let’s go for 7”.

 

He said himself that he went with Pouncey to visit Shazier.
I'm just guessing he wasn't part of the big group visits that we're going on. So maybe that's where Bud was getting that?

 

Like I said... it does not matter what you think on any of this. All the complements you poured on to Watt are all nice and are probably true. But they have nothing to do with what has gone down and how all of it was handled. Who the hell is running this team were it was allowed for a player to act the way Harrison was acting if the rumors are true? Who allowed it to go this far? Porter is an subordinate of Mike Tomlin. It's Tomlin's responsibility. If he had no idea this behavior was happening then why the hell not?

 

Correct, he just didn’t go w/the LB’rs.

 

I just don't feel this is that big of a deal. If he never went to see Shazier then that just makes him a bad person.

As far as the timing of the release, meh. JH was a great player for the Steelers and this only taints (yes I said taint) his legacy. He wont be happy with NE nor will he be there next year. If anything the rumors that are coming out just solidifies the fact that he will probably HAVE to retire now because no team is going to want him.

I think when he goes into the HOF this will be more of a story than his actual accomplishments.

 

First off, Tomlin does have a say in his roster. You don't honestly believe it's not his call to cut a player in the middle of a season? You think he walked into work one day and they said "Mike, Harrison is cut" ? lol Colbert might take care of the paper work but that was not Colbert telling Tomlin he's cutting one of his players off the roster. This is not the same as shopping for FA's or making draft picks in the off season.

Secondly everything you said has nothing to do with why this is Tomlin's fault or isn't. No one cares about a player losing his starting job or losing playing time because of getting beat out by another player. That happens every season. The issue is how all of this transpired and the behavior that was being allowed by the coaching staff. Players are saying Harrison never showed up to meetings, he slept in meetings, he was disrespectful , he gave no effort, he basically quit doing the work and collected a pay check. Now not sure how your job works but in my job if I started doing those things my boss would have put a stop to it immediately. If my boss didn't fire me or discipline me and his boss finds out that's how employees are acting..he's going to get canned.

Nowhere should any of that been tolerated and according to other players this has been going on since the beginning of the season. SO if you want to take the "harrison is completely at fault - screw him" stance then it's still Tomlin's fault for letting this get so out of control. This was allowed to escalate. Here we are a week before the playoffs cutting a player that will help our competition get better....likely to a team we have to beat in a few weeks to get to a SB. Tomlin should have nipped this in the bud back in week 1....not now. And after letting it get this bad Harrison should have been suspended or deactivated... not just cut.

IF Harrison isnt good enough to play...then why did we keep him on the roster till now? Why didn't we tell Harrison you are a 3rd stringer from here on out OR we're cutting you back in week 1? We clearly made that decision when the season started. Harrison is saying they told him he would share duties. Lying to him or changing your mind and not telling him is a big part of how we got here. We created this situation by not being upfront immediately and ignoring the BS that was happening. We created this situation by not making him adhere to team rules and policies. It is the HC that is in charge. You think Bellicheat would allow that to go on in his locker room? There are plenty of people close to the organization that share this opinion. You can bet that ownership is not happy with Tomlin on how all of this was handled.

 

News flash: be certain this was not all a Tomlin thing and to even think it could be is painfully naive. Any decision of this magnitude would certainly go through the GM and definitely through ownership. Obviously, this is a stupid coach and FO, I mean they’ve only gone 12-3 so far this year. Come on man!

 

Your black and white view here is disrupting your ability to use logic. Our FO is not going to cut a player just before the playoffs with out Tomlin's approval. You think Tomlin wanted to cut him in week 1 but they wouldn't let him? Naive? lol The head coach makes roster decisions during the season. I think that's a pretty well accepted fact for the most part. We can get into grey areas all you want but it has nothing to do with cutting a player now because of behavior problems. We are not talking about cutting a starting QB or signing a FA in the middle of the season....we're talking about cutting a back up player who's not played most of the season.. so I'm guessing the FO probably didn't have any issue giving Tomlin the authority to cut a back up off his roster because of behavior or performance.

It's pretty obvious to me that he was cut now because something was said or done that was kind of the last straw. That decision was a knee jerk reaction. He should have been suspended. Granted it never should have been allowed to go this far, but since it did, the only smart option was to suspend him or deactivate him and tell him to not bother showing up. Before you say we needed that roster spot... I'll say that's BS there's other players taking spots that have been deactivated all season. AND maybe I'm wrong but I believe you get a roster exemption if you suspend a player indefinitely for failure to perform your duties or follow rules. It's unfortunate that it got to this... he should have been cut before week 1 OR we should have used him. He wasn't an undrafted FA that was just happy to be collecting a pay check.

I never said our FO and coaches are stupid. What I said was...THIS situation was Tomlin's fault. The entire situation was handled about as poorly as it could have been. It was completely Tomlin's fault for letting this escalate. According to the players he was allowed to now show up to meetings, not follow work out rules, he was calling out players, sleeping in meetings, etc. This isn't week 3... this crap was allowed all season. That's insane. And you know what, I'd be willing to bet Tomlin would say "yes I screwed up big time on this" . If by chance your theory is correct... Tomlin had nothing to do with how we got here with Harrison. It was all the FO's fault and they cut him...then I guess they were to blame for creating this entire mess. Lets all hope this does not end up costing us a SB birth... because the possibility now exists.

Also yes an organization that won 11 games can actually make a (or even several) stupid decisions and still win 11 games. Not sure how involved with managing people you might be in your job but I know in every job I've had if something like this transpired the boss is the one who would be held accountable. IMO it's pretty funny how some are defending the steelers ....like we were just innocent victims and had to just deal with a problem all of a sudden. This didn't just happen with out anyone knowing till now. The team should have cut him before the season started since he clearly did not want to accept his role as a back up.

 

Win sb don’t care bout anything else lol