Mike Tomlin defended his decision to stick with Byron Leftwich the entire game against Baltimore Sunday even though the quarterback was in obvious pain for some of it.
   Tomlin thought Leftwich’s ribs were broken on a sack with abut 4 ½ minutes left rather than early in the game.
  “Byron did a nice job of communicating with us,’’ Tomlin said at his news conference today. “I knew that he had a certain level of discomfort but I didn’t see anything in his performance, coupled with those discussions, to lead me to believe that he needed to be pulled.
   “As a matter of fact, at the end of the game, he threw a ball down the middle of the field to Heath [Miller] that I thought was an accurate and appropriate throw and the throw he made to [Jerricho] Cotchery on the sideline on, maybe the second to last play of the game, was thrown with great velocity and accuracy.
 “I didn’t see anything transpiring on the field, coupled with the discussions that we had, to lead me to believe not to believe what was being said.”

First Published: April 6, 2016, 4:17 p.m.
Updated: December 20, 2020, 12:19 p.m.