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
It would truly be a fairy tale story, to go on road, beat Cincinnati and come in and beat Indianapolis, then to get Jerome back to where it all started for him in Detroit. Somebody needs to write a book about that. It would make a lot of money.
A day ago, nobody wanted to give us a chance. We came out and we did what we had to do. We knew it would be tough to come into Indianapolis, and they beat us pretty good the last time. This is kind of redemption for us.
Maybe the world doesn't believe we can go out and win, to beat the No. 1, 2 and 3 seeds, but you have to have confidence . . . . When you truly believe in it, things turn out, and we're still in it.
Now we're going up to Indy fully loaded. Nobody's giving us a chance. The pressure's on them, it's not on us, because they already beat us.
We beat the stuffing out of them, but turned the ball over too many times. (It was) frustrating because they didn't win the game. We lost the game. We did everything to lose the game and we did that. We shot ourselves in the foot.
People may put them down, but they're the champions. Until someone dethrones them, they're still the team to beat in the NFL.
Travelling the path we travelled, having to go on the road to beat the three top seeds, it is more gratifying now that we're here. But we still have to go out and seize the moment.
We have a lot of confidence. Maybe the world doesn't believe that we can go out and win, but to beat the No. 1 and No. 2 and No. 3 seeds, you've got to have confidence. We felt like with the guys and coaching staff that we have in this locker room, we could get the job done. We've just got to go out and execute our game plan and make plays, and everything will take care of itself.
Initially we did not know what to expect out of him. He kind of got thrown into the fire and it is kind of hard to really see and envision what a rookie can do, because not too many rookie quarterbacks can come into the league like he did and win ball games like he did.
Everyone put overwhelming pressure on us. It was overwhelming for everyone, including the veterans.
Nobody believed in us, but we believed in ourselves, and now we're in the Super Bowl. These last three games on the road show a lot about our team and this coaching staff.
The ball is getting spread around, and everybody's happy. We're still trying to find our identity. We're still a running team, but, when it's time to make plays in the passing game, we've got confidence all three of our guys can go out there and get the job done.
It was just deflating. He rarely fumbles the ball and if this had been his last game, you would have hated to see him go out like that. ... I truly believe the man up above had something to do with that.
They won the division. We really wanted to do that, so congratulations to them. But we've got another shot at them and the loser goes home.