{"id":679941,"date":"2026-06-02T14:12:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T14:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/679941\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T14:12:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T14:12:38","slug":"james-harrison-says-steelers-shouldve-won-2007-super-bowl-explains-what-stopped-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/679941\/","title":{"rendered":"James Harrison Says Steelers Should’ve Won 2007 Super Bowl, Explains What Stopped Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Tomlin stepped down as the<\/a> Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 head coach in early January. He was an NFL fixture for almost 20 years, but he felt like it was time for a change after another disappointing playoff loss. However, that shouldn\u2019t take away from all of his success. He joined the Steelers in 2007, and they won the Super Bowl in his second year with the team. James Harrison believes that Pittsburgh should\u2019ve won its sixth championship in Tomlin\u2019s first season there, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lost a couple starters, things changed, Coach [Bill Cowher] was gone,\u201d Harrison said Monday on his Deebo and Joe podcast.<\/a> \u201cWe lost Joey [Porter], I replaced Peezy, and it was maybe one or two other people, but we still had that core group together. The thing that happened when Mike Tomlin came in, he didn\u2019t change nothing. We kept the same defense, so all we did was put the players into the spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should\u2019ve won the Super Bowl again that year, but we got drove so hard in training camp and through the season that we ended up losing to Jacksonville at home\u2026I feel like we could\u2019ve did it then. We [got] ran into the dirt from training camp all the way through that we didn\u2019t have it to finish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Players have talked about how hard practices were during Tomlin\u2019s first season with the Steelers. He wanted to test the team and set the tone early.<\/p>\n

However, other former Steelers haven\u2019t complained about that. Casey Hampton and Brett Keisel acknowledged<\/a> that it was difficult, but that hard work caused them to respect Tomlin.<\/p>\n

Maybe the Steelers would not have been running on fumes by the end of that season had Tomlin done things differently. However, there\u2019s no guarantee that they would\u2019ve won the Super Bowl. Perhaps the Steelers wouldn\u2019t have even won a championship in 2008 had players not fully bought into Tomlin\u2019s way of doing things in 2007.<\/p>\n

Also, it\u2019s not completely fair to blame Tomlin\u2019s tough style for the Steelers\u2019 2007 season ending with a thud. It\u2019s not like they were riding a wave of momentum following their victory in Super Bowl XL. The Steelers went 8-8 in 2006 and missed the playoffs. Clearly, the head coaching change didn\u2019t do too much damage.<\/p>\n

Living in a world of hypotheticals is useless. The reality is that there are multiple reasons why good teams fail to win the Super Bowl. For example, Ben Roethlisberger threw three interceptions in the Steelers\u2019 2007 playoff loss to the Jaguars. Was the loss all his fault? No, but he played a part, just like Tomlin\u2019s hard practices.<\/p>\n

All\u2019s well that ends well, though. The Steelers bounced back from that playoff loss quickly, being one of the league\u2019s best teams in 2008. Then, they stormed through the postseason to win their sixth Super Bowl. Tomlin had his faults, but<\/a> he deserves credit for that success, too.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Tomlin stepped down as the Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 head coach in early January. He was an NFL fixture…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[271155,106663,349,1321,99,3795],"class_list":["post-679941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-deebo-and-joe","tag-james-harrison","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-sports","tag-trending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}