The Pomp And Joe Show
Tomlin has no update on Watt; Big Ben walks back 'clean house' comments
16 Dec 2025
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What updates did Mike Tomlin provide on T.J. Watt?
pause for dramatic suspense. I don't know if he's been in the facility yet because I've been in a dark room in the back. He might be in the facility as we speak and so I don't have a lot of the answers to that and I was just trying to be transparent when I said I didn't have any new information as I stood here today.
We have you in this setting as opposed to breathing down your neck after practice about this, but is there anything more you can tell us about what you learned about the dry needling technique or how that might continue or not continue with your team? I have no new information regarding that. None whatsoever. All right. Benzie jumping in there. The dry needling technique.
I was imagining Tomlin going... Can we break down the interaction first, Joe? Yes, please. Benzie, he sort of tried to like...
Chapter 2: What is the significance of the dry needling technique in the Steelers' context?
Give a little olive branch of like, hey, Mike, we're not jumping on you right after practice. Now that it's a Tuesday and things have settled down, do you have some more information? Yeah. No, no, absolutely not. So, so much for that approach. Well, the idea. that dry needling could still be going on in the facility.
As I said earlier, Brian, I'm pretty certain without any hard and fast information that a dry needle will never appear at that Steeler facility again as long as we live. What have you learned about all of this over the past several days? And my question really would be, Do you know, or what are you inclined to believe?
Was it a team employee that administered that treatment or an outside contractor for TJ? I don't know for sure, but I've always been under the impression that if you're receiving treatment at the facility, that's where you get the treatment from the team employees. And that if you want to deal with outside people, which many players do, you do that on your own time, either
at your place of residence or at that person's office. And that's kind of how that works. So I did get an email from a man named Boris who played college football and was on an NFL off-season roster at one point. But he's now some sort of medical doctor. He's a published physician, explainer.
Basically, the bottom line of what he wrote, and he does dry needling himself, so he's curious about this. He said it could be a situation where there's no real smoking gun of blame. Maybe someone did the thing right and a strange side effect that is very rare occurred. I guess we can keep that as a
plausible deniability, but yeah, I mean, this doesn't seem like it's eventually TJ, I guess is going to have to get up there and talk to us about it. And I'm sure he'll shrug off all of those questions, but, uh, yeah, it is a bizarre storyline to, to wrench into the end of this Steelers season. Man, I'll say, and it, it would seem or sound.
And I think some of the reporting said that it was an actual puncture. No, no, There was a small hole in the lung? Yeah, now you're getting above my pay grade with lung punctures and collapsed lungs and dropped lungs is a phrase that's been out there. Well, sure, but a punctured lung seems like more than a side effect. It seems like a punctured lung.
Like a needle went into it where it shouldn't go. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to even really fathom or wrap your head around trying to understand the mechanisms at work here. Yeah. never done anything like this. I don't think any of us have. So yeah, I don't know entirely how it works.
I guess I'm willing, I should say I'm willing to keep an open mind to hear the various sides of this, if they ever come out or if anybody ever wants them to come out. But right now, yeah, Mike Tomlin is as coy as ever about TJ Watt. I guess maybe he's telling the truth on that. Like he really is in the dark room watching lions cut ups and,
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