Getting the opportunity to play for your childhood team isn’t always everything you’d hoped it would be. Nothing in life ever is, because there will always be ups and downs, peaks and valleys. There certainly were in the Pittsburgh Steelers career of WR Santonio Holmes, who shared his story with Lorraine Lindsey on her podcast. He told one particular story about how he was fueled to become what he grew up to be by the Steelers’ loss in Super Bowl XXX.
“As a young kid, I dreamed of being someone successful in the National Football League based on the results of the 1995 Super Bowl, the Dallas Cowboys versus the Pittsburgh Steelers”, he said. “My whole mindset was driven because the wide receivers did not do their job in that game, and the Dallas Cowboys ended up winning”.
That is actually the earliest memory I have of actively watching a Steelers game, and it made me a fan even though the end result was dreadful. The wide receivers did put up some numbers in that game, though.
Andre Hastings, for example, caught 10 passes for 98 yards, game highs for either team. Ernie Mills also contributed eight catches for 78 yards. While he had only three catches for 19 yards, one of Yancey Thigpen’s receptions went for a touchdown. It was QB Neil O’Donnell who threw three interceptions, two by Larry Brown, both of which were backbreakers.
Nevertheless, it was that game that fueled Holmes to want to be the player who would eventually be the difference-maker in a Steelers Super Bowl. His “That’s how you be great” remark after catching the game-winning touchdown has become iconic, but few know just how much backstory there is to it.
“I told myself as a young kid that if we ever get into this position to play in the National Football League, or even the Super Bowl, that I would never let this happen to my team”, he said. Little did he know that team would be his and his father’s favorite team. He also recalled the moment he got the phone call on draft day from Pittsburgh.
“I’m on the phone with the Steelers and they said, ‘Just be patient, we’re about to take you’. [My father] comes walking down the hall and I just start smiling even bigger”, he recalled. “And he looked at me, and we looked at each other, and I shook my head, and that was it. That was the history of me growing up as a Steelers fan in the early ‘90s in Florida, to be able to manifest this into existence”.
Holmes, a first-round pick in 2006, played four seasons for the Steelers, catching 235 passes for 3,835 yards with 20 touchdowns. He caught another 16 passes in the postseason for 275 yards and three scores. None were bigger than in Super Bowl XLIII. He caught nine passes for 131 yards, but it was his last, which went for six yards, that will be immortalized as one of the greatest plays in the history of the game.
