stillers4me
01-10-2016, 03:58 PM
A big thanks to DK for making this article free. You'll want to read all the way to the end.
Mike Tomlin and James Harrison had somehow gotten word.
The Steelers were making their exit, stage left into Paul Brown Stadium’s visiting tunnel, late Saturday night, and the din down there was as thick as the downpour just outside. The athletes were hooting and hollering, their dancing cleats clattering, their soggy backsides getting celebratory slaps from all sides in the immediate aftermath of sensationally besting the Bengals, 18-16, in what really should be remembered as the AFC Wild Wilder And Wildest Card game. And that noise was nothing next to the nearby fuss from the vocal, sometimes violent football fans of this otherwise fair city, hanging over the tunnel railings to berate or pelt pretty much anyone who passed underneath.
“They got me with popcorn!” Jarvis Jones would exclaim later. “You believe that? Who hits anyone with popcorn? What’s that?”
“Crazy,” Vince Williams echoed across the way. “Just crazy. On the field. On the sidelines. In the stands. Everywhere.”
“Not like anything I’ve seen in my career,” Marcus Gilbert said.
Tomlin, too, seemed taken aback when calling it “a tough, tough, hostile environment.”
But even amid all that, Tomlin and Harrison had heard inside that tunnel, right after the team strikingly ran off the field in unison — more on that later — that Ben Roethlisberger was the last of the Steelers still out there. He was surrounded by cameras and microphones near the 20-yard line, some of them were rolling live, and he kept taking questions.
So Tomlin and Harrison went back out. And they didn’t walk. They went full-bore sprint.
Upon arrival, Tomlin promptly shooed away all media, then placed his arm behind Roethlisberger to nudge him ahead toward the tunnel. Roethlisberger obliged, and he proceeded that way slightly ahead of Tomlin and Harrison. As he approached the tunnel area, he doffed his cap — with the left arm, the only one still capable of doffing after a shoulder injury to the passing arm — to a handful of hardy souls in the seats twirling Terrible Towels. He even mustered a small smile. But as he got closer, other fans clad in Cincinnati colors began flinging in his direction whatever debris they hadn’t already flung. Security rushed to the railings to try to prevent more, but the Steelers’ trio took no chances. Roethlisberger’s cap went back on, Harrison applied his helmet and all three closed rank and strode purposefully until inside.............
Read more @ http://dkpittsburghsports.com/FREE/2016/01/10/column-8/
Mike Tomlin and James Harrison had somehow gotten word.
The Steelers were making their exit, stage left into Paul Brown Stadium’s visiting tunnel, late Saturday night, and the din down there was as thick as the downpour just outside. The athletes were hooting and hollering, their dancing cleats clattering, their soggy backsides getting celebratory slaps from all sides in the immediate aftermath of sensationally besting the Bengals, 18-16, in what really should be remembered as the AFC Wild Wilder And Wildest Card game. And that noise was nothing next to the nearby fuss from the vocal, sometimes violent football fans of this otherwise fair city, hanging over the tunnel railings to berate or pelt pretty much anyone who passed underneath.
“They got me with popcorn!” Jarvis Jones would exclaim later. “You believe that? Who hits anyone with popcorn? What’s that?”
“Crazy,” Vince Williams echoed across the way. “Just crazy. On the field. On the sidelines. In the stands. Everywhere.”
“Not like anything I’ve seen in my career,” Marcus Gilbert said.
Tomlin, too, seemed taken aback when calling it “a tough, tough, hostile environment.”
But even amid all that, Tomlin and Harrison had heard inside that tunnel, right after the team strikingly ran off the field in unison — more on that later — that Ben Roethlisberger was the last of the Steelers still out there. He was surrounded by cameras and microphones near the 20-yard line, some of them were rolling live, and he kept taking questions.
So Tomlin and Harrison went back out. And they didn’t walk. They went full-bore sprint.
Upon arrival, Tomlin promptly shooed away all media, then placed his arm behind Roethlisberger to nudge him ahead toward the tunnel. Roethlisberger obliged, and he proceeded that way slightly ahead of Tomlin and Harrison. As he approached the tunnel area, he doffed his cap — with the left arm, the only one still capable of doffing after a shoulder injury to the passing arm — to a handful of hardy souls in the seats twirling Terrible Towels. He even mustered a small smile. But as he got closer, other fans clad in Cincinnati colors began flinging in his direction whatever debris they hadn’t already flung. Security rushed to the railings to try to prevent more, but the Steelers’ trio took no chances. Roethlisberger’s cap went back on, Harrison applied his helmet and all three closed rank and strode purposefully until inside.............
Read more @ http://dkpittsburghsports.com/FREE/2016/01/10/column-8/