‘Participant’s Coach’ Management Fashion Is The Greatest (And Worst) Half Of Mike Tomlin, James Harrison Says

The majority of former NFL players who describe Mike Tomlin as a “player’s coach” use that term as a positive. It’s a label to explain that he relates to his players and creates a good working atmosphere. But there are plenty of people who will turn that same phrase around as a negative to say that Tomlin isn’t tough enough on his players. Former Steeler James Harrison sees both sides of that debate.

“With Mike, the biggest thing I guess that I like about him is he is a player’s coach,” Harrison said Wednesday evening via Nightcap. “And the thing that I dislike about him is he is a player’s coach to a point of, sometimes it can disrupt because it goes maybe a little too far with allowing certain things with certain players. And then it becomes an issue with that player.”

He was careful not to name names, but the most notable example from Tomlin’s career is Antonio Brown. There were perhaps a different set of standards applied to him because of Tomlin attempting to manage the mercurial wide receiver. Eventually that situation spiraled out of control. According to Aditi Kinkhabwala, Hines Ward was nearly hired as the Steelers’ WR coach at one point, but it didn’t happen because he wanted to be able to hold everybody equally accountable. Brown was operating under his own set of rules by that point.

To Tomlin’s credit, he got one of the best six-year runs out of a receiver that the league has ever seen. It’s impossible to say, but perhaps no other coach would have been able to manage the situation to a point of that much success in the first place. Harrison wasn’t around for George Pickens, but that is another example of a player who seemed to escape reasonable expectations of accountability as he showed up late to meetings and hurt the team on the field with post-snap penalties.

Harrison brought up his 2017 exit from the Steelers toward the end of his career after he fell asleep in meetings and did everything he could to force his way off the roster.

“Especially towards the end of my career, the biggest thing was, you ask the tough question, you get the tough answer,” Harrison said. “Well, I was asking tough questions, and I wasn’t getting the answer. I was getting told things that weren’t the answer that was the true answer.”

Harrison didn’t come back to the Steelers to play backup, but he ended up playing second fiddle to Bud Dupree and T.J. Watt. To be fair, the Steelers probably didn’t expect Watt to be as good as he was in his rookie season, and it made sense to have Harrison there as a stopgap at the time.

Earlier today, long snapper Christian Kuntz appeared on the Kaboly + Mack podcast and pushed back on the negative connotations of calling Tomlin a “player’s coach,” saying he is “ruthless” with how he holds players accountable down to the minute details.

Perhaps Tomlin has evolved over the years, or maybe Harrison’s opinion is colored by the anomalous exception that was Antonio Brown. But there are good and bad parts of every leadership style, and Tomlin continues to be one of Pittsburgh’s biggest attractions for free agents around the league.