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Take that, Terry Bradshaw.

After his players had spoken in his defense over the weekend, Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin fired back at Terry Bradshaw for calling him "a cheerleader guy" as a coach and questioning his greatness.

Tomlin didn't dispute the greatness part, saying that the adjective "great" is reserved for guys like Bill Belichick and Gregg Popovich. "The rest of us are just working stiffs, to be quite honest with you," he told reporters.

And then ... kaboom.

"That being said, terms like 'cheerleader guy,' to me, maybe fall outside the bounds of critique or criticism. They probably fall more to the area of disrespect or unprofessional," Tomlin said. "But what do I know? I grew up a Dallas fan. Particularly a Hollywood Henderson fan."

That's a sly dig, maybe even a great one. Henderson, in one of the all-time great sports spats, famously said before Super Bowl XIII that Bradshaw was so dumb "he couldn't spell 'cat' if you spotted him the 'c' and the 'a.'"

Bradshaw, a Hall of Famer who won four Super Bowls with the team in a career that spanned 1970-83, has the credentials to talk about his former team, at least. "I don't know what he does," the Fox Sports commentator said Friday on Fox Sports 1. "I don't think he is a great coach at all. His name never even pops in my mind when we think about great coaches in the NFL."

Maybe it should. Tomlin, who is only 44, has won 102 games since replacing Bill Cowher 10 years ago and has gone 1-1 in Super Bowls. His players went out Sunday and won his fifth AFC North title, with Antonio Brown's stretch-play touchdown providing a 31-27 victory that was the team's sixth in a row.

Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger shrugged off Bradshaw's comments. "What did Kansas say?" he said, referencing a musical group and song from Bradshaw's era. "Dust in the wind."

Lineman David DeCastro was incensed. "I pulled up ESPN around 10 p.m. [Friday] and was like, 'What the hell is this?'" he said of Bradshaw's comments. "I don't get what the motivation is. Is this to get your name out there more or something? What are you doing?"

After the victory, linebacker Vince Williams chimed in on Twitter. "Not bad for a cheerleader."

For a while, Tomlin was content to let others do the talking. "He has his fingerprints all over this team," defensive end Cam Heyward told the Post-Gazette. "Those comments were just reckless. They were stupid and didn't need to be said. I hope this win reminds everybody how good of a coach we have."

Guard Ramon Foster called out Bradshaw, too. "If you watch him, he spends hours upon hours in his room — or as he calls it, the hole — and he's a real student of the game," he said. "Come spend a week with him. See how it goes down. Then you make an opinion about him. But to say [what Bradshaw said] is ludicrous."

On Tuesday, though, Tomlin spoke up, drawing the line between legitimate criticism and disrespect.

"Criticism and critique are very much a part of our business," he said, "and it's an element of our business that as a competitor I embrace."