Former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Bill Cowher visited ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show on Thursday, and Cowher responded to Jacksonville Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence’s comment about Pittsburgh’s terrible towels.
“No, I know what they are, the yellow wipes they’re waving,” Lawrence said yesterday during a press conference on Jaguar’s YouTube channel.
Cowher took offense to this while appearing on McAfee today.
“Little gold towel? Come on Trevor, it’s not a little gold towel. It’s called the Terrible Towel. And you are terrible because this cloth makes you terrible. That’s why it’s called the dreaded towel,” Cowher said.
While Lawrence’s quote wasn’t necessarily disparaging, and he went on to say how excited he is to play in Pittsburgh against a veteran organization like the Steelers, Cowher’s response is still funny. It’s fair to say that a history of players (and mascots) disdaining the dreaded towel is not company Lawrence wants to be a part of. His own franchise was hit by the Terrible Towel Curse in 2008 when mascot Jaxson de Ville (yes, that’s really his name) rubbed a horrible towel between his armpits and butt early in the third quarter of a Week 5 game. The Steelers won 26-21 and the Jaguars have lost eight of their last 11 games. You’d think de Ville had learned his lesson, but he was still in trouble for the towel.
The Jaguars aren’t the only organization that has had problems after stepping on the towel or turning it in. The Cincinnati Bengals and T.J. Houshmandzadeh and Jeremy Hill and the Tennessee Titans and LenDale White and Keith Bulluck saw their team’s streak end when they stepped on the towel. Lawrence wasn’t nearly as outrageous as those other examples, but Cowher, who was born and raised in Pittsburgh and later became Pittsburgh’s head coach, knows all too well what the towel and the Steelers mean to Pittsburgh and Steelers fans. It is one of the symbols of the team, and it cannot be a fun environment with thousands of fans. It can make you play terribly. Apparently that’s not always the case, as Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers embarrassed the Steelers in Week 1 at Acrisure Stadium.
But the Steelers will try to make Lawrence look awful on Sunday as they try to go 5-2 on the season.
