Mike Tomlin didn’t take kindly to Terry Bradshaw’s cheerleader comment

On Friday December 23rd, retired NFL quarterback Terry Bradshaw called out Pittsburgh Steelers’ Head Coach Mike Tomlin for being “really a great cheerleader guy.” On Tuesday, let’s just say Tomlin didn’t take kindly to that cheerleader comment.

Aditi Kinkhabwala is a reporter for the NFL Network and NFL.com and was at Tomlin’s press conference today when Bradshaw’s comments came up. Here’s what the Steelers’ head coach had to say.

Woah. While Mike Tomlin says no issue w/ critiques, he does believe term like "cheerleader" is over the line and disrespectful.

— Aditi Kinkhabwala (@AKinkhabwala) December 27, 2016

Mike Tomlin says of Terry Bradshaw, "What do I know? I grew up a Dallas an, in particular a Hollywood Henderson fan." (1/2)

— Aditi Kinkhabwala (@AKinkhabwala) December 27, 2016

For all the kiddos at home, Hollywood Henderson once said Terry Bradshaw "couldn't spell 'cat' if you spotted him the 'c' and the 'a.'"

— Aditi Kinkhabwala (@AKinkhabwala) December 27, 2016

Tomlin definitely didn’t hold back when going after Bradshaw and neither did his players.

https://twitter.com/VinnyVidiVici98/status/813192221180776448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

“We weren’t happy about it,” guard David DeCastro told ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler. “Hopefully it will fire us up the rest of the way.

“I pulled up ESPN around 10 p.m. (Friday) and was like, ‘What the hell is this?. I don’t get what the motivation is. Is this to get your name out there more or something? What are you doing?”

Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger simply disregarded Bradshaw’s comments.

“What did Kansas say? Dust in the wind,” Roethlisberger said.

The Steelers are 10-5 and have locked up the AFC North division crown for the second time in the last three years. Despite the fact that Tomlin has had great success in Pittsburgh since taking over from Bill Cowher as head coach in 2007, Tomlin went in on his critique of Bradshaw’s comments to say he doesn’t think his resume compares to those of Bill Belichick and Gregg Popovich.

Here’s the full response from Tomlin, where he described Bradshaw’s comments as in “the area of disrespect and unprofessional”.

Here is Mike Tomlin’s full answer on Terry Bradshaw’s criticism: pic.twitter.com/Rn66wCPiXC

— Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerESPN) December 27, 2016

Tomlin led Pittsburgh to a victory in Super Bowl XLIII in 2008, his second year at the helm of the team. 2016 will be Tomlin’s 7th trip to the playoffs in 10 seasons as the Steelers’ head coach. In 2008, he was named Coach of the Year and has never finished under .500 during his decade in charge of the team.

That sounds like a pretty solid head coach resume to me.

[Larry Brown Sports]