{"id":838101,"date":"2026-03-28T01:44:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T01:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/838101\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T01:44:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T01:44:30","slug":"stop-tampering-pacman-jones-blasts-james-harrison-for-recruiting-pitch-to-joe-burrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/838101\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Stop Tampering!’: Pacman Jones Blasts James Harrison For Recruiting Pitch To Joe Burrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

It never takes much to stir up bad blood between the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers, especially the group from the mid-2010s when Vontaze Burfict and Pacman Jones became public enemies No. 1 and 2 in Pittsburgh. James Harrison\u2019s recent recruiting pitch<\/a> to Bengals QB Joe Burrow was enough to quickly stir up some online drama.<\/p>\n

\u201cJames Harrison had a comment talking about talking to Joe Burrow to go to Pittsburgh \u2014 the shitty-ass state,\u201d Jones said via BetOnline\u2019s Politely Raw podcast<\/a>. \u201cWe are orange and black, not yellow and black. Our roads do not have big ass potholes in them when you driving around\u2026But he had the nerves to come out and say that he had to talk to Joe Burrow? I talked to Joe Burrow. Ain\u2019t no way in hell. Joe is an Ohio boy. We do not want to go to Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis organization that had all Fs on this G-damn report card? It seems like it would be a downgrade to anybody that\u2019s leaving Cincinnati to go to G-damn Pittsburgh,\u201d Jones continued. \u201cThis shit has gotta stop and it\u2019s gotta stop right now. And I called James and I told him, \u2018Hey, stop tampering with our fucking players.’\u201d<\/p>\n

I am just going to ignore the fact that Jones doesn\u2019t know the difference between a city and a state. Or that only 12 percent of Cincinnati residents are satisfied<\/a> with pothole road repairs.<\/p>\n

Getting this upset is the natural reaction when Jones knows Harrison is making a recruiting pitch to join a much better situation. Join the tradition of six Super Bowls, or toil in the mediocrity of an organization that has won zero? And if you want to call that ancient history, how about the fact that the Steelers have been above the Bengals in the division standings in each of the last three seasons?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to make projections. The Bengals have been bad with Burrow, while the Steelers have been good despite a QB carousel including Kenny Pickett, Mason Rudolph, Russell Wilson, Justin Fields and Aaron Rodgers. Plop Burrow into the Steelers current roster, and they\u2019d be considered one of the best teams in the NFL.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also comical that Jones pointed to NFLPA survey results as a dig at the Steelers, especially when the Bengals did poorly in the most recent iteration. By the Cincinnati Enquirer\u2019s own headline, they finished \u201cnear the cellar.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

This kind of trade would never happen, but it\u2019s funny to see former Bengals squirm in discomfort at James Harrison\u2019s obvious attempt to rile them up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It never takes much to stir up bad blood between the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers, especially the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":838102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2053],"tags":[228,41610,227,256,2296,7,2710,1577,6,7260,57],"class_list":["post-838101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cincinnati-bengals","tag-bengals","tag-betonline","tag-cincinnati","tag-cincinnati-bengals","tag-cincinnatibengals","tag-football","tag-james-harrison","tag-joe-burrow","tag-nfl","tag-pacman-jones","tag-pittsburgh-steelers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116304273441637703","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}