Hines Ward
Hines Ward
Hines Edward Ward, Jr.is a retired American football wide receiver, businessman, and television personality. He is the current NBC studio analyst who played 14 seasons for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League. He played college football at the University of Georgia. The Pittsburgh Steelers selected him in the third round of the 1998 NFL Draft, and he became the team's all-time leader in receptions, receiving yardage and touchdown receptions. Ward was voted MVP of Super Bowl XL, and...
ProfessionFootball Player
Date of Birth8 March 1976
CitySeoul, South Korea
I wanted to be here especially in a game-time situation,
Teams seem to put us in black jerseys whenever we go anywhere that's hot. We're accustomed to playing in that.
That's just a matter of Ben trusting me to find a hole for him and working my way hard through the coverage. He found me, and it was a big conversion for us.
You really don't realize you're playing with a Hall of Fame running back until it comes to an end. If this will be his last year, what better way than to finish where it all started?
You only get a number of opportunities to make big plays, and that was a big play.
It was all for Jerome. We were going to fight for him. I'm just so happy for him. The way he ended his career, to win a Super Bowl in his own town, is a fairy tale come true.
The Super Bowl tickets, that's the worst headache. I'm glad they gave us the week off. You really need a couple of days. They say you lose family members over the Super Bowl and I can see why because everybody in the family didn't get tickets. They're mad at me now. That's when I realized we were going to the Super Bowl.
I got so upset at myself on the touchdown pass that I dropped. I make that catch in my sleep a hundred times a night.
If this is going to be his last year, what better way than to finish his career off where it all started in Detroit? Last year, we were one game short. This year, we're back to that and that's all we ask for is another opportunity. We're in that position to put him back in the Super Bowl.
I didn't want to make it a media circus. It's something that's part of football, it happens. It was a road I had to come across and I tried to handle as best and as professionally as I could.
I don't get caught up in numbers. All I care about is winning.
Of course, all wide receivers want to catch all the balls, ... But the game plan that day was for us to go out and run the ball. I only had two attempts, so I made the most of it.
Carolina played a lot of Cover 2. When teams play Cover 2, you have to be able to run the ball. We didn't do that. And, we have to stay away from negative (yardage) plays.
Only in football, as I say, you can get (from) that all-time high to that all-time low back to that all-time high.