Is there really bad blood between Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin and Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh after-all, and was the terse meeting at midfield following the Steelers 23-20 win last Sunday fueled by comments made by Harbaugh in the Ravens locker room following their win over the Steelers just two weeks earlier? Tomlin\’s former college teammate Darren Sharper seems to think so.
Sharper said Wednesday night on Showtime\’s Inside the NFL program that there is indeed bad blood between the two coaches and that the comments made by Harbaugh to his team in the locker room after their win in Pittsburgh didn\’t help the relationship any.
“There\’s bad blood between these two coaches,” Sharper said, via a USA Today report. “I know this for sure,” Sharper said. “I talked to Mike, and after the game I asked him about the handshake, and he said that there is some bad blood there. And he did not appreciate what Coach Harbaugh said postgame after the first victory.”
“You think about the fact that the teams do not like each other, so that carries over to the coaches because they\’re the ones preaching to the team before the games. And before this game there was a little bit of an incident in which Coach Harbaugh had some comments after they beat the Pittsburgh Steelers which he knew the camera was on, too.”
During the post game address to his team following the Ravens 13-10 win over the Steelers back in Week 11, Harbaugh said, with the NFL cameras rolling, that the tougher and more mentally prepared team won that game. He added that the better team won that game. Did he know what he was doing? Sure he did.
Both Tomlin and Harbaugh pretty much blew off any notion that the post game handshake this past Sunday was out of the ordinary and Tomlin chalked it up to him wanting to beat his players to the locker room to congratulate them one-by-one as they arrived as the reason why it might have looked like he dissed Harbaugh, who obviously looked dissed.
Sharper played with Tomlin at William & Mary in the 1990s and the two reportedly still talk from time to time, so it would not be surprising that he might have an extra bit of insight into how Tomlin might really feel about Harbaugh.
The Steelers and the Ravens are currently the best rivalry in the NFL right now hands down and one can only hope that we get to see one more post game handshake between these two coaches in the playoffs. If we don\’t, there will still be several more that will take place over the coming years and the Handshake-gate will definitely not be going away any time soon as these two coaches will not be giving each other bro hugs after games.
