In terms of former Pittsburgh Steelers players, there has been nobody more pubilicly critical of Mike Tomlin than James Harrison. Part of that is his new YouTube podcast, where it pays to say provocative things, but he seems to genuinely have issues with his former coach. He confirmed some of that on Friday’s episode of Deebo & Joe.

“Our relationship was business. It was just that, it was business,” Harrison said. “The No. 1 thing I was taught by my parents is you never lie to me, ’cause if you lie to me, I can’t help you, and then I can’t trust you. The first time I know he lied to me was 2010. But the big thing was the first time I know he lied on me, and that was 2013. As much as he says he doesn’t listen to the outside noise, I found that to be a lie in 2018.”

Harrison’s exit from Pittsburgh at the end of the 2017 season was not a clean break. It wasn’t Le’Veon Bell, Martavis Bryant, or Antonio Brown causing all the issues as you might assume. It was Harrison who was the locker room cancer, sleeping in meetings and being openly insubordinate as he received less playing time than he felt like he deserved.

The Steelers eventually released him, and he promptly signed with the New England Patriots and nearly completed another Super Bowl run with them before falling short to the Philadelphia Eagles in the final game.

So what is Harrison’s proof that Tomlin wasn’t shutting out the noise, as he so often claims he does?

“He was into his feelings because I said that [Bill] Belichick was a better coach than him,” Harrison recalled about a TV segment he did on FOX Sports’ Undisputed. “He responded with something like, ‘[LaMarr] Woodley was a smarter player than you.’”

It sounds like a relatively petty exchange between the two, who clearly had already had a falling out of sorts in the 2017 season. He proceeded to pull up the exact text or screenshot of the text to read it verbatim.

“Here’s his text. He says ‘Wood was a smarter player than you, but I would never say that to anybody but you. I’m not with you for what you say. I’m always with you because of your relationship with the game and what you were willing to do. Don’t act funny. I will always be with you, no matter how fucked up you are LOL.’”

According to Harrison, this was three or four weeks after he compared Tomlin and Belichick in the middle of a day roughly when the Steelers would have been practicing. To Harrison, that’s evidence that he most certainly was not shutting out the outside noise.

Harrison texted back and said he’s entitled to his opinion just like he is with that he said about Tomlin before turning his own remarks right back around at him.

“I’ll always be with you no matter how fucked up you are. 100.”

It’s interesting because Harrison helped at Steelers training camps since then, and he also put feelers out about joining the Steelers coaching staff at one point. He said he “got no response.” Perhaps that is another part of the issue between the two.

Over the course of 19 years, coaching probably close to 1,000-plus men, Tomlin was bound to ruffle some feathers. Not every person is going to connect with his style. What we found out when he stepped down was that the 2025 team seemed to be almost unanimously behind its head coach with a funeral-like setting prevailing when he announced that he was stepping down.

You can’t count all former Steelers among those upset with the news. Plenty of them reacted to the news on social media congratulating Tomlin on a legendary career.  Not James Harrison. He spent most of his Friday podcast conducting a hit piece on Tomlin and his legacy.

He even went as far as to say Mike Tomlin doesn’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.