Tom Rose Edinburgh, SCOT 12/31/2017
On Saturday Dec 23rd, the Pittsburgh Steelers announced that they were cutting 15 year veteran and 39 year old linebacker James Harrison from their roster to make room for left tackle Marcus Gilbert. Normally, one doesn’t tend to bat an eyelid when a player is cut from a team as it’s all down to business. This cut struck me as an odd one though. James Harrison was the core leader of the Steelers defense and is their franchise sack leader with 82.5 sacks to his name. A two time Super Bowl Champion and the 2008 defensive player of the year just doesn’t get tossed for no reason. He wasn’t on the market long as the Patriots signed him a couple of days later, which could come back to bite the Steelers in a potential AFC Championship match up. So how did it come to this, who’s at fault and is it even important in the grand scheme of things?
Some say that the 15 year vet has lost a step. Take a look at Harrison’s Instagram (@jhharrison92) and you’ll see that this isn’t the case as he throws up an 8 plate incline bench press without so much as breaking a sweat. His gym videos and work ethic are the reasons why I respect Harrison as a player. The 2 seasons prior to this one, he averaged 15 games and 5 sacks and signed a new 2 year contract in the off season. All this showed that Harrison wasn’t planning on slowing down anytime soon. Yet everything seemed to change this season with the emergence of rookie TJ Watt and 3rd year Bud Dupree. Both have similar stats to Harrison (4.5/6 sacks respectfully), yet Harrison hardly made the cut to be dressed on game day and when he did dress, he was lucky to get a couple of snaps. Initially, when reading the weekly Steelers Inactive report card, Harrison was listed with a “back injury”. Again, probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at this until Harrison posted a video of him working out (lifting crazy weights) hours after each game. OK, maybe he was training round the injury to ensure he stayed fit. About 6-7 weeks into the season, he came off the injury report but remained a healthy scratch. Normally this doesn’t happen to veteran leaders of a defense with a relentless work ethic, so I suspected that there was more to this and started to pay a bit more attention to the situation.
After the dog fight that was the Steelers @ Bengals game (I wish Ryan Shazier well in his recovery from that terrible back injury), Ramon Foster posts another video of Harrison working out where he is making it very clear that the Steelers were mad to keep “260 pounds on the sideline” by directly addressing us with “what the h***s wrong with them?”. This was the start of a messy break up that the New England Patriots may well be able to capitalize on.
After news broke that the Patriots had signed Harrison to a deal, his ex team mates had plenty to say. Maurkice Pouncey (Centre) claimed that Harrison wanted out and signing for the Patriots erases his Steelers legacy. Bud Dupree (linebacker) deflects blame from the Steelers and cites that it was his apparent mentor Harrison’s own fault he got cut. Left tackle Marcus Gilbert claims Harrison has ****ed his team mates over and the Quarterback (the voice of reason on the majority of teams) Ben Roethlisberger addresses the risk that Harrison could provide information to the Patriots about the Steelers playbooks. This is messy, but it isn’t the only incident of player disruption that has happened with the Steelers. Wide receiver Antonio Brown had a full blown tantrum on the sideline during the week 4 game at Baltimore. Prior to that we had the whole Brown Facebook live incident post game when the Steelers beat the Chiefs in the playoffs last year. We’ve also had Martavis Bryant commenting numerous times that he felt he was better than rookie wide receiver Juju Smith-Schuster, yet he was unhappy with the lack of passes/reps he was being thrown. We also had Roethlisberger come out and ponder retirement mid way through the season after throwing 5 interceptions in a home loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Mike Tomlin and the Steelers did their best to address all of these situations by addressing the media head on and acknowledging that they had happened. They then dealt with each issue in house without making further comment, which was the correct thing for them to do in the interests of the team. Regular occurrences of these incidents suggest that the Steelers need to get their house in order sooner rather than later before it starts affecting the rest of the team. When Shazier went down with that near fatal back injury against the Bengals, it seemed to bring the Steelers back together as a unit as they pulled back a 17-0 deficit to win the game 23-20 with a last second field goal.
Then the James Harrison saga exploded. Rumours surfaced that he was a poor team mate this year, failing to visit Shazier in hospital post injury, not turning up to meetings, napping in the ones that he attended and leaving the stadium when told that he would not be dressing for the game. These aren’t great things to hear about someone who is one of the most professional students of the game who got on the Steelers roster the hard way as an undrafted rookie in 2002.
On Friday, Harrison responded to his team mates’ accusations explaining that he was promised reps in training camp when signing his new deal, yet he didn’t get any. This continued into regular season practice and after being told not to dress for the first few games, he asked to be released again. The Steelers said no. After giving 13 years of blood, sweat and tears to the organization, its understandable why Harrison grew frustrated and the final slap in the face came when he dressed for the Ravens game, yet didn’t play a snap. I understand why the Steelers wanted to hang onto Harrison. He would be able to mentor some of the younger guys on the team. However, Harrison still feels that he can play, so probably sees the Steelers fazing him out of the team as a slap in the face for 13 years of service with a relentless work ethic.
So here we are, at the end of a bitter break up. The Steelers say one thing and Harrison says another. The Steelers have had a number of issues with team personnel this year alone, which suggests that they’re not the best at handling these situations. Harrison has also probably burnt his chance of retiring a Steelers legend by going to the Patriots. However, Belichick and co up in Foxborough will be licking their lips at their latest acquisition. The addition of Harrison addresses their glaring pass rush issues from earlier on this season. Harrison will be playing with a point to prove and to stick it to his old ball club and his ex team mates which will give him an extra edge. The Steelers may have to rethink their entire playbooks to mitigate the risk of Harrison potentially providing the Patriots with intel on their game plan for them. Of course, this will all become mute if my beloved Baltimore Ravens get into the playoffs, get past the wild card round and eliminate one of these AFC giants on their way to Super bowl 52. Or it could add a bit of spice to a potential AFC Championship rematch between the Steelers and the Patriots. The Steelers are expected to rest a number of starters today against the Browns, yet it is probably a safe bet to back them to beat the 0-15 Cleveland Browns today. It will also be worth keeping an eye on the Patriots game against the Jets. If Harrison plays, it could give us an idea as to whether the Steelers made the right decision in cutting him or if they may potentially regret it further down the line.
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