KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Surrounded by teammates in crisp suits and well-considered ensembles, James Harrison slid on a black T-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts. He rolled up the fabric to protect his skinned knee.
Then, beat up and bloody after his team’s narrow win at Arrowhead Stadium against the Kansas City Chiefs in an AFC division playoff game, he went looking for a bandage. Someone in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ cramped, makeshift medical office offered a small covering, but Harrison saw it and – no, it was much too small.
“I need something else,” the Steelers linebacker said. “Something bigger.”
He was ornery, though that’s not especially unusual, and almost an hour after a game Harrison helped win, he was mostly put back together. Now he headed through a door, toward the team bus and the AFC Championship Game against the New England Patriots.
“My whole body hurts, man,” the 6-foot, 242-pound defender said as he walked. “I’m 38 years old.”
Harrison, the NFL’s oldest defensive player – he’s got Minnesota cornerback Terence Newman beat by exactly four months – is still unsatisfied and still a disruptor about 15 months before his 40th birthday.
This past Sunday, the Chiefs had seized momentum from Pittsburgh, whose offense had punished Kansas City’s defense for nearly four full quarters but had scored zero touchdowns. Then, Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith engineered a touchdown drive and needed only a two-point conversion to tie the score at 18. Smith dropped back, and Harrison rushed toward him; offensive tackle Eric Fisher, the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2013, hooked an arm around Harrison’s neck as Smith threw toward tight end Demetrius Harris in the end zone. The cruelty of the sequence was that Chiefs players and fans had a few seconds to celebrate Smith’s completion before they noticed the flag.
The next attempt, moved backward 10 yards for Fisher’s hold on Harrison, failed and the Steelers won. A while later, Harrison himself expressed surprise the officials had penalized Fisher – particularly on such a game-altering play – and said he drew that foul only every “blue moon,” but anyway, he’d take it.
So would the Steelers, who survived on a playoff record six field goals to win 18-16, earning the right to face the Patriots and Tom Brady on Sunday at 6:40 p.m. in Foxborough, Mass. If Pittsburgh, the AFC’s No. 3 seed, has a credible shot of dethroning the kings, it will not be because of Ben Roethlisberger or Antonio Brown or Le’Veon Bell. It’ll be because Harrison has enough vinegar and meanness left in him to frustrate Brady and help bring down a quarterback sacked only 15 times during the regular season. It’ll be because he was able to somehow hold his aching body together one more week.
By now, that takes some effort. Harrison, who still hasn’t announced whether he’ll return for a 15th NFL season in 2017, said he spends his weeks following a steady regimen of massage, acupuncture, dry needling and chiropractic work. Earlier this month, Harrison told NFL Network he spends about $350,000 annually – or a little less than a third of his base salary with the Steelers – on maintaining his body.
“Whatever it is,” Harrison said in the locker room Sunday, “that I think is going to help me to advance in my old age.”
Somehow, it works – and has for a long time. By now Harrison’s story is well-told: He was undrafted out of Kent State in 2002, concerns about his size making him a natural at no position, and so he worked to build himself into an NFL player. The Steelers picked him up, and he bounced around pro football – including the NFL Europe’s Rhein Fire, which Harrison has also outlasted by nearly a decade – before collecting 36 sacks between the 2008 and 2010 seasons.
He was named defensive player of the year in 2008, became a star by returning an interception 100 yards in Pittsburgh’s Super Bowl win following the ’08 season, retired in 2013 and returned a season later. He has publicly called NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a “crook and a puppet,” was arrested on assault charges in 2008 against his girlfriend (later dropped after Harrison agreed to attend counseling sessions) and met with NFL investigators last August after an Al-Jazeera report linked Harrison and three other active players with performance-enhancing drugs (he was subsequently cleared).
Harrison has, in other words, experienced a full football career. Well, almost: Neither Harrison nor the Steelers have ever beaten Brady in the playoffs; in fact, Pittsburgh is 3-9 overall against New England since 2002, including a 27-16 loss at Heinz Field in October.
“We’re better than what we were then. They’re better than what they were then,” said Harrison, who has 2 sacks in two playoff contests. “I’m just blessed to have that opportunity to go out there and have another chance.”
There was, he said, no time to waste. He was already turning his attention toward getting back to Pittsburgh, toward preparing for New England as quickly as possible.
So when the Steelers touched down, an ornery soul with one more thing on his football to-do list passed up going to bed to rest his 38-year-old bones. Instead, at a little after 5 a.m. – five hours after that holding call against Fisher and four hours after bandaging his knee – Harrison headed for the Steelers’ weight room, beginning his work week early.