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Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger recently said that his relationship with coach Bill Cowher "wasn't great."

Cowher's reaction to the comment "wasn't great," either.

Talk in league circles is that Cowher is very unhappy with Roethlisberger's comment. Cowher supported and nurtured the young quarterback during their three years together, and Cowher never spoke out negatively about Roethlisberger after he nearly died as a result of a motorcycle accident in June 2006.

Said Roethlisberger last month: "It's going to be definitely different, because coach Cowher was, obviously, here before I got here, so our relationship wasn't great just for the fact that he was here so long before I got here, and I was just a young kid, a rookie, when he got here. Coach Tomlin and I are both, in a sense, rookies together. So, I think we might have a little bit better relationship."

The fact that the statement from Roethlisberger was plastered onto the team's official web site not long after the comments were made also is a slap, we believe, at the former coach, whose wishy-washiness in 2006 regarding his future with the team chafed some within the organization.

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