Cleveland Browns: 10 Pittsburgh Steelers we love to hate
3. Cleveland Browns really hated undrafted LB James Harrison
How can the Browns ever compete with the Steelers if they are getting undrafted players to develop into the NFL Defensive Player of the Year? The Browns were always looking forward to the NFL draft. Draft, schmaft. How about developing some players?
Harrison was only 6-foot tall and weighed 240 pounds coming out of Kent State University when the Steelers signed him in 2002. He was too small to be an NFL player. According to a controversial article in 2012 in Men’s Journal by Paul Solotaroff, Harrison was a lost rookie that year, who had trouble learning the playbook.
The Steelers cut him, and he went to the Ravens for a while, and even played for their NFL Europe team, the Rhein Fire, and was cut by them also.
Finally, he had another gig with the Steelers in 2004 and this time he stayed.
In 2005, Harrison became known to Cleveland fans because one very drunk fan ran out on the field during a blowout loss to the Steelers, and Harrison picked up the guy and slammed him to the turf. It actually appeared to be a medium-force tackle. Clips exist on YouTube, which you can find by searching for “James Harrison” and “Cleveland fan.” Make no mistake, the Cleveland fan was in the wrong and richly deserved the reward he got.
On the other hand, Harrison was fined a whopping $75,000 after he knocked out Josh Cribbs, his former Kent State teammate, and Mohamad Massaquoi in the same game. The size of the fine was probably due to the fact that the two collisions were in the same game. Neither play looked like they were (obvious) deliberate targeting and neither were penalized at the time.
On replay, the judgment of the NFL was that Harrison was just very clever at getting away with it. That particular week there were a large number of concussions in the NFL, and that is why he received such a large fine. The NFL just got tired of players “accidentally” having concussions while being tackled by Harrison.
Cribbs, ever the competitor, didn’t regard the hit as malicious and actually urged Harrison not to change the way he played.
Harrison was a case of a player being developed by the Steelers. It took him five years to become a starter. But he ultimately became the Steelers’ all-time sack leader.
The Browns, especially in the early days, took the point of view that players immediately reach their peak in summer camp during their rookie year. They either have it or they don’t. Sometimes Steelers linebackers who are too small, too slow wind up becoming NFL Defensive Player of the Year and knock out our guys.
And I pretty much hate that Browns fans didn’t seem to realize that anything was wrong and continued to dream about drafting a superhuman messianic quarterback in the next year’s draft.