A post-game discussion between Steelers coach Mike Tomlin and Bengals safety Reggie Nelson started fairly innocuously -- before becoming heated before resulting in Bengals coach Marvin Lewis breaking it up. The initial assumption was that Tomlin either objected to Nelson’s low hit on running back Le’Veon Bell or to Nelson’s arguably taunting after inflicting a knee injury.
Instead, Tomlin said after the game that it was totally unrelated to anything that happened on the field.
“It’s not an illegal hit,” Tomlin told reporters. “It’s not illegal. I did not [have an issue with it].”
So what happened between Tomlin and Nelson?
“You have to ask him about that,” Tomlin said. “He was talking about some he-said, she-said type of a deal. I don’t know what he was talking about. . . . I guess a teammate told him that I said something regarding him. That’s untrue. Ask him. I have a lot of respect for Reggie Nelson. He’s a good player.”
Via Coley Harvey of ESPN.com, Nelson refused to talk about the situation after the game.
The situation is bizarre, to say the least. And it’s odd to think that any “he-said, she-said” disagreement involving a coach of one NFL team and a player on another NFL team would lead to an awkward post-game incident, under any circumstances.