Mike Tomlin is one of the longest tenured coaches in the NFL at this point, so when he starts talking about the greatest individual performances that he has witnessed in his career, it carries some serious weight. With the Pittsburgh Steelers having a Monday Night Football game later today, we can rewind all the way back to Tomlin’s first primetime Monday game as head coach, and arguably one of the single greatest defensive performances of all time by an individual player with James Harrison.
Harrison had 10 tackles, 3.5 sacks, an interception, 2 forced fumbles, and a fumble recovery back in 2007 on Monday Night Football. To make it even more special, it was against the rival Baltimore Ravens.
Tomlin was asked if that is the most dominant performance he has ever seen by a defensive player in his weekly Q & A with Bob Labriola on the Steelers’ website.
“Arguably, and you didn’t mention the 6 quarterback hits to put it in perspective of how vivid that performance is to me. But I’ve been around some sick, sick performances, and that is definitively, arguably one of them,” Tomlin said via Labriola.
So who logged the other dominant performance that is etched into Tomlin’s memory? It wasn’t another Steeler, but from his time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers while he was a defensive backs coach.
“We were in the 2002 NFC Championship Game, and Ronde Barber stood on his head against the Philadelphia Eagles and put up a similar game (3 tackles, 1 sack, 1 interception that he returned 97 yards for a touchdown, 4 passes defensed, and 1 forced fumble),” Tomlin said. “Those are probably the top two single individual defensive performances that I’ve been in close proximity to.”
The Buccaneers cruised past the Eagles that day, 27-10. Barber’s 97-yard interception that was returned for a touchdown resulted in at least a 10-point swing, if not 14 points. It obviously would have been a much different game had he not made that play. Tomlin talks about great players making big plays in big moments, and it doesn’t get much bigger than a conference championship game.
I think most Steelers fans would argue that Harrison’s takes the cake between those two performances, but they are both all-time greats for individual defensive players.
Watt didn’t make the splash in terms of forced fumbles in either of these games, but during his Defensive Player of the Year season in 2021, he had a 4-sack game with 5 QB hits and 2 passes defensed against the Cleveland Browns. He also had a 3.5-sack performance with 6 QB hits and a forced fumble against the Ravens that season. Both of those games from Watt at least deserve a mention in this conversation.
They didn’t have color rush jerseys back then, but the Steelers were wearing throwback jerseys for that dominant James Harrison game on Monday Night Football in 2007. The Steelers will be wearing color rush tonight, so perhaps Watt can create a third entry in Tomlin’s memory bank for the greatest individual defensive performances he has coached.
