Troy Polamalu is one of the greatest Pittsburgh Steelers of all-time.
The former USC Trojan was selected by Pittsburgh in the first round of the 2003 NFL Draft and helped Pittsburgh make it to three Super Bowls during his tenure with the team, winning two Lombardi Trophies. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the Class of 2020 after concluding a prestigious career in the Black and Gold, being named and eight-time Pro Bowler, a four-time first team All-Pro, winning NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 2010, and racked up 783 total tackles, 56 TFLs, 12 sacks, 32 INTs, 107 PBUs, 14 forced fumbles, seven fumble recoveries, and five defensive TDs in the regular season.
Speaking to former teammate Bryant McFadden and Patrick Peterson on the All Things Covered podcast, Polamalu was asked when the first time he was told that he could have played with the great Steelers teams of the 70s that won four Super Bowls. Polamalu said that he had two Steelers legends approach him during his career, stating they would have loved to have played with him back in the day.
“Yeah, Mel Blount said that,” Polamalu said on All Things Covered. “And then Mean Joe [Greene] said that.”
Mel Blount and Joe Greene were two of the most iconic names on the Pittsburgh Steelers during the 1970s. Greene is widely regarded as Pittsburgh’s best player of all-time, being the Steelers’ influential building block that helped them rise from obscurity and become the dynasty they were for nearly a decade. Blount was one of the best DBs of his era, playing a similar physical style like Polamalu at CB where he manhandled WRs, having a rule named after him to keep him from contacting receivers five yards past the LOS. It ended up not mattering in the long run as Blount went on to have a Hall of Fame career and Pittsburgh won two more Super Bowls after the rule was instituted in 1978.
For Polamalu, receiving such recognition from the greats before him wasn’t something that inflated his ego. Rather, it made him feel like he was living up to the standard of what it meant to be a Pittsburgh Steeler.
“It made me feel welcome,” Polamalu continued. “It made me actually feel like a Steeler. There’s a lot of people that wear that uniform, but there is very few that earn the respect of the elders and earn the respect of the city. And that to me solidified that I would be a Steeler forever.”
When you think of the Pittsburgh Steelers, you don’t think of the average starters or guys who were good for a short period of time. You think of the all-time greats like “Mean” Joe Greene, Mel Blount, Franco Harris, and Troy Polamalu. Polamalu was a throwback player, doing things that nobody had seen before on the football field, but he also played with that passion and grit the Steelers of the 70s were known for. If you were to go through all the Steelers teams throughout the franchise’s history, one player who probably would have been able to play at a high level for any team would be Polamalu.
All Troy Polamalu ever wanted was to be accepted by the team and the city that drafted him. Well, mission accomplished for the Hall of Fame safety as Polamalu is considered one of the all-time greats himself, sustaining the standard of excellence in the Steel City.
