Mike Sullivan had seen and heard enough. So he let out a roar.
Which is precisely what the alpha-male in the pack tends to do.
On the surface, there's nothing super-newsworthy about the head coach's blowup at the Penguins' practice Wednesday at PPG Paints Arena. This sort of thing happens far more often in professional sports than most people, even us omnipresent reporter types, can know. It happens behind closed doors. Or team buses. Or charter jets.
At the same time, the scene got me to thinking: Have we ever had a period in Pittsburgh sports where the coaches/manager are this much in control of the various machinations of their respective teams?
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Mike Tomlin is a players' coach. He's too easy on the team, lets them get away with whatever they want because he wants to be their pal.
Take your pick from that paragraph, and you'll be mouth-breathing the dumbest, most ill-informed statement any Pittsburgh sports fan can make on any Pittsburgh sports topic. And that's even independent of the overarching implication that an African-American coach would want to be best buds with all those African-American players because ... you know, something something African-American.
Even removing race from the equation, it's utterly baseless. And anyone who observes the team on any regular basis can and would, I believe, support me on this.
If anything, Tomlin is tough as hell on his team.
Where it counts.
Anyone who speaks this players' coach nonsense needs to come out to Latrobe and watch one of those training camp sessions under a merciless daylong sun. Watch the whole thing. Then watch what happens when the final horn goes and Tomlin yells out, "We're not done!" before digging in for another half-hour.
When Ben Roethlisberger publicly complained last week that maybe the Steelers ought to back off physical practices during the season, he was tacitly addressing Tomlin, the one man who would decide that.
I didn't pick up any reference to a players' coach in that, did you?
(Can't wait till Tuesday, by the way, to hear Tomlin's first chance to respond to that. Here's betting it won't be terribly sympathetic.)
Tomlin's got his guys, sure. Every coach does. As cited above, Sullivan does, too. He uses Antonio Brown as a role model for the younger wide receivers because he sees the outrageous work ethic AB displays where it counts, which is on the football field and not in his choice of footwear. He lets AB be AB, for the most part. He does likewise with Ben, with Maurkice Pouncey, James Harrison, Willie Gay, Mike Mitchell, Cam Heyward, Lawrence Timmons, the players he trusts.
But when Le'Veon Bell starts acting like a goofball, it's Tomlin who'll walk right up to him to straighten him out. Not in private, either.
When Ryan Shazier has an injury that the coach doesn't deem as significant as the player does, Tomlin will tell reporters that Shazier has a 'boo-boo.'
Remember that one?
If Sullivan accused one of the Penguins -- any of them -- of overplaying an injury, there would be gasps across the continent.
Tomlin did it, we were all, like, yeah, that's Tomlin.
Why was he not the players' coach then?
Look, Tomlin's not above criticism. And no, not all criticism of Tomlin connotes racism, though I'm sure some will frame all of the above that way to form a faux rebuttal. I'd actually like to think that very, very little of the overall criticism aimed at Tomlin is about anything other than his merits.
But this specific instance of Tomlin being the players' coach, wow, this isn't rooted in anything resembling reality, so what else could it be?
People point to Bill Cowher as if he were the role model. But he oversaw, without repercussion, Plaxico Burress' immortal spiking of a live ball at midfield ...
.. plus all of Santonio Holmes' transgressions and a ton more, and somehow all of that's OK?
Gee whiz, why?
The broader point: Tomlin's in command. He's in on personnel. He's in on the draft, for better or worse. He's in on every microscopic slice of the operation. He's also got that locker room as tight as any coach I've ever covered, and I dare say that's painfully evident by how the Steelers have bonded for second-half surges each of the past three seasons. The NFL's best teams are the ones who get stronger as the season goes. That persistence starts with leadership, and leadership starts with the coach.
I feel strangely compelled to add this, only for your full context: I don't have any particular affinity for the man. I've found Tomlin, on a personal level, to be rude, condescending and, other than one appreciative handshake in London that he offered to all of us reporters who made the trip overseas to cover a game against the Vikings, I don't think I've ever shared anything meaningful with him.
So it's anything but personal when I defend him passionately on this count.
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Sullivan and Tomlin have won championships, but neither can claim to have entered an interview process with his prospective employer by "interviewing them," as Clint Hurdle famously did with the Pirates in late 2010.
"I looked them in the eyes and asked them, 'Are you in?' " Hurdle would tell us in a packed PNC Park press conference room that November, with Bob Nutting, Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington off to the side. "And to a man they looked me in the eye and said, 'We're in.' ... I was extremely appreciate of the way the men defended the fort."
Hilarious!
It was the gold standard of introductory press conferences. I'll never, for as long as I do this job, forget the sight of a manager being hired and his first act at the podium being having to defend whether his new bosses were serious about winning.
Well, never mind that Hurdle was obviously correct to be cynical, certainly after that front-office triumvirate carved 20 wins off his roster before this past season. What's most relevant toward this discussion is that Hurdle is as much in command, as authoritative, as outspoken, as independent-minded as any of the above three.
And God save the Pittsburgh Baseball Club the day he isn't around to nullify them to the extent he can.
In a sea of wishy-washy wannabes distracted by all kinds of nonsense that's got nothing to do with winning, Hurdle is the voice, the heartbeat of the operation. And he's anything but afraid to be upfront in both ways.
Remember Hurdle rising to the top step in D.C. to blister A.J. Burnett, of all people?
I was there and still can't believe I witnessed it.
Remember Hurdle benching Andrew McCutchen for an entire series this summer in Atlanta?
Or all the times, especially at Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings when it could do the most good, that he'd openly state his positional wish list, stopping short only of dropping actual names and price tags?
Yeah, those three guys over his head love when he does that.
Hurdle's actually as much in command as Sullivan or Tomlin, albeit with the unfortunate exception that he's essentially flying solo. He represents the franchise with class and integrity, on and off the field. He's more responsible than anyone -- I wrote this at the time and will believe it forever -- for the spectacular "rebonding of a franchise and a city" that occurred at that Blackout game. He's even worked behind the scenes, and tirelessly at that, to mend fences between the rest of the operation and the isolated Huntington-and-his-two-lieutenants clique. Trust me on this one: That's not easy.
It's always fallacy to make sweeping generalizations between eras, especially when big-league professional sports began in our city way back in 1887, but I feel plenty comfortable saying, between the above three gentlemen, we've rarely, if ever, had all three head coach/manager positions held by people standing so tall.