TAMPA, Fla. – This wasn’t sup posed to be his moment, or his game. There had already been more moments in this game, forever moments, than in most of the 42 Super Bowls that had preceded it. There wasn’t room for anyone else. Certainly not Santonio Holmes.
People were still gasping about James Harrison’s mad gallop from goal line to goal line, still calling it the greatest Super Bowl play they’d ever seen even late in the fourth quarter, as Larry Fitzgerald stripped off his uniform, revealed the “S” on his chest, and dashed 64 yards for the score that was surely going to deliver the Cardinals one of the most improbable Super Bowl titles ever.
Of course it was going to be Harrison, the best defensive player in the entire NFL. Or Fitzgerald, the most electric player. Stars find moments like these. The moments aren’t supposed to go free-lancing, looking for alternate heroes.
But Holmes figured he’d throw his hat in the ring anyway.
“I want to be the guy!” Holmes screamed at Ben Roethlisberger as the Steelers began their final gasp, pinned up against the shadow of their goal line, the rabid roar of Cardinals fans colliding with the nervous chanting of Steelers fans somewhere above the turf at Raymond James Stadium.
Roethlisberger clapped his hands.
“I want to win this game for you, man!” Holmes yelled. “Just give me the ball! Give me a chance to make plays! I’ll do it for you.”
Holmes had already had a terrific game. He’d already nearly made one of the most important catches in Steelers history a few minutes before, one that was wiped out when a holding penalty in the end zone turned a key third-down conversion into a safety.
And Roethlisberger knew Holmes was right, too. Hines Ward had given a game effort, but his leg was clearly limiting him. Holmes has always had a knack for drama, and that wasn’t always a good thing. He’d been suspended from the Giants game in October, arrested for marijuana possession. He wasn’t always Roethlisberger’s most reliable huddle mate.
But he also knew, if the Steelers were going to get out of this pickle they’d built for themselves, he would have to find No. 10. On the sidelines, random Steelers grabbed his jersey, told him the same thing.
“Ten,” they said, “you’ve got to be the guy to make the plays here.”
And you know what happened then? Ten was the guy who made the plays there. On first-and-20, he picked up 14 huge yards, getting the Steelers’ blood flowing again. On third-and-6, just after the two-minute warning, he picked up 13 more. And then, second-and-six, under a minute, the biggest play of his life: a 40-yard scamper from the Arizona 46 to the 6.
Which remained the biggest play of his life for exactly 14 seconds.
Roethlisberger explained the play this way: “Drop back, scramble right, scramble left, find someone open.”
The ball was high; Holmes plucked it out of the sky. The momentum was sure to carry him wide of the end zone; somehow, Holmes found it in him to keep a couple of toes of each foot in the red-painted sod.
“I knew my toes were on the ground the whole time,” he would say. “Once I extended my arms and my body everything just flowed right together. I never left the ground.”
Which was as it should be because from there on in, they never touched the ground. He wrapped his arms tight around the MVP award later, when this masterful 27-23 victory was official. He drank in the adulation. Who would ever have believed this?
