For a head coach who during media sessions manages to say a lot of words with little meaning—in other words, he excels at coach speak—Pittsburgh Steelers Head Coach Mike Tomlin has a way of making headlines, intentionally or not, when he’s in a more intimate interview setting. He did so recently when he referred to the departures of Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell as a cleansing.
That remark was widely debated in the days that followed. One of his former players, Ryan Clark, also weighed in recently, and given his substantial history with Tomlin, I thought he had an interesting perspective, which he provided during a First Take segment, beginning by recalling his decision not to allow Clark to play against the Denver Broncos in Colorado during the 2011 postseason.