Steelers Now
Cleveland Browns legend Joshua Cribbs recently revealed on the BigPlay Cleveland podcast the he hated the Pittsburgh Steelers so much that he would’ve never considered playing for the Black and Gold.
“After a while, you would have seen that it was a business and football, if I would’ve made that move. I respected [Mike] Tomlin, playing against him twice a year every year. It was a mutual respect across the 50-yard line. I just couldn’t do it; I was bred from Cleveland and bred into hating the Black and Gold … I couldn’t do that,” Cribbs said.
Cribbs is from Washington D.C., but he played his college ball at Kent State. Combining his college career and time with the Browns, he played 12 seasons in Northeast Ohio.
Cribbs is feeling quite confident in his old team’s ability to have success in the AFC North in 2026, especially against the Steelers. Cribbs thinks the Steelers downfall is coming with Mike Tomlin no longer in the picture.
“I’m so ready for football season. I’m so ready because this division doesn’t scare me,” Cribbs recently said. “We don’t have Tomlin. It is nothing to take away from the Steelers and McCarthy. He’s [McCarthy] a valuable coach. But Tomlin had a winning season every year. He was in the thick of it every year now. Those are the questions. Only that you can’t answer on paper from the team. ‘Yeah, on paper, we look good,’ but I can’t do that no more because coach Sam Rutigliano embarrassed me. He was like, ‘Oh, yeah, toilet paper.’ I’m gonna always say this. I never say we look good on paper. We gotta go out there and actually do it.”
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: Browns Legend Opens Up on Deep-Rooted Hatred for the Steelers
