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
To me, it's like you put in all this hard work, and we didn't capitalize on it. When you look at it, we had a great year.
We have a guy that when it's time to play around, he's joking with the players. But when it's time for business, to get on that field and get better, he's all about business. We respect that. It makes you want to go out and fight even harder for the guy.
We have to stay away from the negative plays. The third-and-longs, those are hard to overcome. We overcame a couple of them last year but last year we were a great team with second-and-short, third-and-short.
We dominated ... and we still lost. Hard to forget that one.
I can't even begin to tell you how do good this feels ... especially after how our season ended last year. Nobody believed in us except the guys in this locker room. All our hard work has paid off. We're going to the Super Bowl.
For us, we don't get caught up in statistics as much. As players, the team MVP is the guy who exemplifies hard work at practices, gives it his all on Sundays and is the guy to get the guys up.
It's the hardest thing I've ever been through. It's amazing how my season started off with my contract situation, and now I end up with the opportunity to play in the Super Bowl. I would have never imagined that it would turn out the way it did.
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.
Jerome has inspired each individual on this team in some form or way. He kind of inspires us to go out and play hard so we can get him that Super Bowl ring and end on a great note.
Relieved? Yes, ... I dont wish this on anybody. It was very hard to go out onto the field with peace of mind knowing that youre so close. I can go into the season focused now.
Everybody hurts when you lose. But he takes it hard.
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.
We have to count our blessings. The man above, he really looked down on Jerome and said, 'I'm not going to let you end your career on a fumble like that.' ... We're one game away from getting him to Detroit.
We fell one game short (last year). A lot of guys are focused, real hungry. Things didnt go particularly the way we wanted in the preseason, but you dont game-plan in the preseason. Our whole focus now is Tennessee.