Roughly a week after Joey Porter said that James Harrison and former Steelers teammate Ben Roethlisberger “broke the brotherhood” with their recent comments regarding Mike Tomlin, Harrison addressed Porter’s comments on his podcast while also defending Roethlisberger’s character.
“That was just a pure out attack on Ben’s character, and what I said about Mike was an attack on his coaching,” Harrison said. “That’s more breaking the brotherhood than what Ben said. Ben said, ‘I think I feel that maybe Tomlin should move on.’ … That’s what he said. I went way harder than that, but [Porter] went at it because he obviously has a personal issue with Ben that hasn’t been resolved.”
Harrison said that he and Porter have spoken since Porter aired his grievances on fellow former teammate Cameron Heyward’s podcast. Harrison chalked the situation up as brotherly squabbling while making it clear that he and Porter had to agree to disagree as it relates to their opinions on the matter.
Instead of keeping things in-house, Porter decided to publicly criticize both Harrison and Roethlisberger, with whom he won a Super Bowl with back in 2005.
Regarding what Porter said about him, Harrison appeared to take issue with the notion that he should be more grateful to Tomlin given that the majority of his success in Pittsburgh occurred under Tomlin’s watch. Harrison feels that Porter’s comments diminish the hard work Harrison did on his own in order to become the first undrafted rookie to ever win Defensive Player of the Year.
“Implying that it was given to me undeservingly, it wasn’t,” Harrison said. “[Bill Cowher] cut me three times. Hell, I would have cut me. … I earned everything I was given, even the cuts.”
Harrison also doubled down on his earlier take on Tomlin being a good but not great coach, which is what prompted Porter’s criticism of him. While he acknowledged that Tomlin did do a lot with less talent at times, he also played a role in the Steelers’ personnel shortcomings while alluding to some of the team’s misses in the first two rounds of the NFL Draft. Harrison also eluded to the Steelers’ recent lack of playoff success.
“And the biggest thing for me, you ain’t got a coaching tree,” Harrison said. “The coaching tree is the greatest indicator of your strength in teaching and the ability to develop other coaches under your leadership.”
When it comes to Roethlisberger, Harrison doesn’t understand why Porter took shots at his character.
“I said, ‘Listen, Joey, it ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun,'” Harrison said. “Joey has a personal issue with Ben, and he was the rabbit with the gun. He took his shot because he doesn’t see Ben as a brother, OK? And me, personally, I do not think Ben is a bad teammate, because I have a good relationship with Ben.”
Harrison acknowledged the largely common knowledge that Roethlisberger wasn’t exactly the best teammate early in his career that was — in Harrison’s opinion — largely the byproduct of all of the early success Roethlisberger and the Steelers had.
“Ben went 13-1 as a rookie. The team was 15-1,” Harrison said. “His second season, he won the Super Bowl, the youngest quarterback to ever do it, and that’s when Seven was born. He became the youngest quarterback to ever win a Super Bowl. Hell yeah, that’s going stroke my ego and give me delusions of grandeur. But over time, he has matured and grown up. You don’t value the same things you did at 23 that you do at 30. Hell, I’m a different person at 47 than I was at 45, and I’m a far worse person at 40 than I was at 45.
“So with that being said, there’s things that you saw and heard in the locker room, but it was never something that we couldn’t correct with each other. So the relationship with Ben is still intact for me, and right now, we are far better, greater friends, brothers now than we ever were in the past, and that continues to grow.”
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