Larry Brown Sports

Too bad I already wrote up my list of the best revenge games on the 2013 NFL schedule, because James Harrison returning to Pittsburgh will definitely be intense.

Harrison signed a two-year deal with the Cincinnati Bengals on Friday, ending a week-long process of negotiations.

The 2008 NFL Defensive Player of the Year is psyched about going to his new team:

Whodey!!!!!!!!!!! Hello Cincinnati!!!!

— James Harrison (@jharrison9292) April 19, 2013

Though Harrison is turning 35 in May and had knee surgery before last season, he was still effective. Harrison had 70 tackles, six sacks, and two forced fumbles in 13 games last season. This is a great addition for the Bengals, and you better believe Harrison will be motivated to prove the Steelers wrong.

The Bengals visit Pittsburgh in Week 15.

James Harrison has had an extremely quiet season with the Pittsburgh Steelers, by James Harrison’s standards. His sack numbers are down, but he has also kept his name free of talk about concussions and illegal hits. The Pro Bowl linebacker says that is because he has been aiming a lot lower.

“I’ve really lowered my target area to where it’s down around the knees,” Harrison told Mike and Mike on Friday morning, via Pro Football Talk. “Situations come along where you could tackle the guy high. I don’t do that anymore. I tackle the guy low.”

Of course, Harrison didn’t have an epiphany and wake up one morning seeing things Roger Goodell’s way. Instead, it sounds like he had an agenda in explaining his new style of tackling. He then went into a discussion about how he strained Denver Broncos receiver Eric Decker’s MCL in the playoffs last year.

“I could have tackled him high, but if I had hit him high, I probably would have gotten a helmet-to-helmet or something and gotten fined,” Harrison said. “So I hit him low and strained his MCL. … They’re saying it’s a life-threatening injury to hit a guy in the head and he gets a concussion and so on and so forth, but I think a life-threatening injury is to go low on a guy and blow out his ACL or whatever, and he’s not able to come back the way he was before. Now he can’t make a living, he can’t feed his family, he can’t do what he does. That’s life-threatening to me.”

You can certainly make the argument that targeting an opponent’s knees is just as dangerous for their career, and I understand where Harrison is coming from. However, the NFL is trying to avoid lawsuits from players who suffer from long-term brain damage. A player’s quality of life after football is less likely to be affected by a leg injury than a head injury.

All we can do now is wait and see if hits like this one and this one have been put in Harrison’s past.

Players who compete in the NFL are required to be good at football. They are not required to have any knowledge of the history of the game, but it’s nice when they do. You wouldn’t exactly have to search high and low to find an NFL player who knows who former Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler is. But if your search started with James Harrison it would not end there.

Stabler is leading a concussion lawsuit against the NFL that was filed earlier this week. The lawsuit mentions the NFL’s commercial during Super Bowl 46 which highlighted the NFL timeline and how the rules in the league have changed over the years. Stabler and others take issue with the fact that the commercial did not point out “how recidivist violators like James Harrison are allowed to continue to play the game.” Harrison does not care what Stabler thinks, because he claims to have no idea who he is.

During an interview with Tim Benz of WXDX radio on Thursday, Harrison claimed he was not aware of the lawsuit or that it mentioned his name. When Benz told him that it was brought forth by Ken Stabler and other former NFL players, Harrison gave the following response.

“Who is — Ken who?” he asked before being reminded that he was a former Raiders quarterback. “Who is that? Never heard of him. His opinion doesn’t matter to me.”

Stabler isn’t exactly one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game, but he did win a Super Bowl, play on four Pro Bowl teams and win a league MVP award in 1974. I guess it’s somewhat possible that Harrison has never heard of him, but given James’ track record of acting like an a-hole he probably wouldn’t admit it if he did.

The idea behind wearing throwback jerseys is usually less about fashion and more about preserving history. Based on our modern standards of fashion, most of them are hideous. No one actually thinks the navy blue and gold “Titans” jerseys that the Jets wear once or twice a year look good, but the team does it to make a statement about its history. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that it happens to be another way to boost merchandise sales, but I’m sure no teams think about money when they do it. In any event, the Steelers recently unveiled their 80th anniversary jerseys that they will wear this season, and James Harrison is not a fan.

There’s a reason these jerseys were from 1932….. it’s 2012 now though, so send them back!!!lol fb.me/1FqMEi1dB

— James Harrison (@jharrison9292) April 17, 2012

Considering Harrison has a history of using his Twitter account to complain about everything, this isn’t a surprise. Of course the uniforms are ugly — they’re from 1932. I’m sure he won’t mind the extra cash in his pocket when he sees these jerseys walking around with a No. 92 on the back of them.

James Harrison admitted he was looking for a reaction with his post-Super Bowl comments, and he’s getting one. The Steelers linebacker tweeted shortly after the Patriots’ loss to the Giants that cheaters never win.

His teammate Ryan Clark tweeted similar thoughts, saying “0-2 post spy gate! Just saying!!”

What they said doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. New England still has won plenty since being busted for filming opposing teams’ signals. The only thing they haven’t done is win a Super Bowl.

Former Giants receiver Amani Toomer said before the game that if the Pats lost, their three Super Bowls deserved asterisks. We questioned his logic; suspicion about three previous Super Bowl wins is independent of the team’s Super Bowl success or failure now.

The Patriots filmed opposing teams because it obviously gave them an edge. But we believe they’re no longer cheating, yet they’re still having winning seasons, and they still have reached two Super Bowls since then. I don’t think they lost this game because they didn’t have the Giants’ signals on film. I firmly believe they were two drops away from winning two more Super Bowls.

If there is some sort of Super Bowl karma for unsportsmanlike conduct, then it doesn’t explain how the dirtiest player in the NFL won a ring in 2008.

James Harrison is recognized as one of the dirtiest players in the NFL. He was suspended a game this season for his helmet-to-helmet hit on Colt McCoy. He’s committed five illegal hits in three years, and he was fined six times the last two seasons. Harrison even made an illegal hit on Josh Cribbs when the players were teammates in college. But is Harrison a dirty player? Mike Tomlin says no.

Asked during a conference call by the Cleveland media if Harrison is dirty, Tomlin said no. The Steelers coach was then asked to explain the rash of illegal hits by his star linebacker.

“They’re unfortunate plays. I think the circumstances around those plays and all of that’s been well documented. I base my judgment on his quality of play, based on his total body of work, from being around him day to day for the last five years. I can say comfortably that I don’t believe that James Harrison is a dirty player.”

Tomlin believes there are collisions in football and that not all of them will be legal.

I understand where Tomlin is coming from and I agree with him to a certain extent. Sometimes hits are unavoidable if you’re trying to make a play. But Harrison has a pattern of committing helmet-to-helmet hits. If he leads with his shoulder instead of his dome, he’ll avoid them, but he hasn’t changed his style. That’s what makes him dirty, contrary to what Mike Tomlin says.

James Harrison returned to practice on Wednesday for the Steelers. With the way Pittsburgh played on the road in San Francisco Monday night, they need all the help they can get. Harrison spoke to reporters after practice and had a number of quick responses, most of which indicate he now has an “oh well” attitude when the league reprimands him. He did, however, say he thinks the Browns deserve to be punished for letting McCoy go back in after the big hit.

“My helmet hit his helmet, it is what it is,” Harrison said. “If he was hurt so bad I don’t know why they let him back in two plays later. Something should be done to them, I would think. I got a game, what should they get?

While Harrison has a point, you can’t compare his crime to their crime.  He wasn’t suspended because he injured McCoy, but because the hit was illegal.  The league didn’t have to see that McCoy suffered a concussion to suspend Harrison for yet another helmet-to-helmet hit.

That being said, Harrison isn’t the only one who believes the Browns should be punished in some way.  McCoy’s father was furious the Cleveland coaches and trainers let his son back in the game and their decision completely undermines the league’s hazy policy on concussions.  Harrison is wrong in thinking that the league should have given him a break, but he is right that the Browns should face some sort of penalty for putting McCoy’s health at risk.