The steepest in the 4 fines the previous Steelers linebacker James Harrison incurred in 2010 stemmed from the vicious helmet-to-helmet hit he delivered on Cleveland Browns receiver Mohamed Massaquoi, knocking him out by using a concussion. The hit went with no penalty on the sphere, although the N.F.L., intent on meting out stiffer self-control for violations of participant protection, docked Harrison $seventy five,000 — at least many of which, Harrison claimed over a podcast Thursday, was offset by his mentor, Mike Tomlin.
Harrison, showing on Barstool Sports’s “Likely Deep” podcast, told his former Pittsburgh teammate Willie Colon that Tomlin — who even now coaches the Steelers — slipped him an envelope shortly following the good was levied.
“Dude, I’m telling you — seventy five,” Harrison said, referencing the quantity of the fantastic. “And I ain’t gonna lie to you personally: When that transpired, ideal, the G-est factor Mike Tomlin ever did, he handed me an envelope after that. I ain’t gonna say what, but he handed me an envelope after that.”
Harrison recounted the Tale unprompted, immediately after Colon asked him with regards to the heftiest wonderful he absorbed throughout his fifteen N.F.L. seasons.
“Hear, on everything I like, on my daddy’s grave, I strike that male with about max fifty % of what I'd,” Harrison reported of Massaquoi. “And that i just strike him due to the fact I wanted him to let unfastened with the ball. If I had knew they was gonna wonderful me $seventy five,000, I would have made an effort to get rid of him.”
Harrison’s high-quality was later on diminished to $fifty,000. Despite the fact that Harrison did not explicitly say what the envelope contained, the mere insinuation that Tomlin compensated him in almost any way evoked comparison on the so-termed Bountygate scandal, in which the New Orleans Saints’ coaching workers was determined about A 3-yr period of time to have offered payouts to defensive gamers who hurt opponents, In accordance with a league investigation. The Saints’ coach, Sean Payton, didn't fork out gamers himself, even so the league suspended him for any yr, in part, for not stopping the method following he was made aware of it.
It's unclear whether or not the league will explore the make a difference with Harrison and Tomlin; a spokesman for that N.File.L. declined to comment on Friday. League regulations stipulate that groups and its users are prohibited from paying out a player’s wonderful.
In an announcement, Steelers President Art Rooney II reported he was positive that Harrison’s allegations are untrue. “I'm very particular absolutely nothing like this ever transpired,” Rooney reported. “I don't know why James would make a comment similar to this, but there's simply no basis for believing something such as this.”
Harrison on Friday posted a statement to his Instagram account that seemingly walked again his before remark. “Mike T. Has not compensated me for hurting a person or Seeking to hurt another person or put a bounty on ANYBODY!” it browse.
Harrison, together with the Hall of Fame safety Troy Polamalu, was the snarling encounter on the Steelers’ defense during the 2000s, every time they received two Super Bowls. The league’s defensive participant in the year in 2008, Harrison designed a standing for administering violent hits that teetered over the boundaries of legality. After the strike on Massaquoi in 2010, Harrison and Tomlin argued that it had been thoroughly clean and didn’t advantage a fine. Tomlin, at time, also reported he favored harder penalties and rule modifications to improve participant security.
A member of the N.File.L.’s Competitiveness committee, Payton, as well as Saints’ Group, have had a combative marriage Together with the league considering that Bountygate, and it's only deepened, once the egregious non-get in touch with Check over here that probable denied New Orleans an excellent Bowl berth adhering to the 2018 season. During a radio interview on Thursday, Payton all but challenged N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell to research the Steelers, indicating he would be “stunned” Should the league did and that men and women “shouldn’t keep their breath” watching for it to take action.
“I think what passed off with us back in 2011 in so many ways was a sham, and yet there wasn’t a whole lot we could do with it,” Payton reported on a hundred and five.7 FM in Baltimore. “The gamers had been vindicated, but from a league or coaching standpoint, there is not any union, there's no illustration.”
He additional, “That’ll be something which’s tucked absent or under the rug at Park Avenue. They’ll check into it briefly. Listen, don’t get me begun on that. I misplaced $six million in income, and honestly it had been a thing that I’ll under no circumstances definitely get over mainly because I understand how it was dealt with And just how it was operate and the reasons powering it. That’s just the reality.”