Hines Ward Done?
The Hines Ward era is apparently over in Pittsburgh. Well, the highly-compensated Hines Ward era anyway.
Ward was always a love-hate guy for me. I either loved him for something or he was pissing me off for something. In his prime, there were few wideouts better than he if he didn't possess game changing speed. Perhaps that what I liked most about him- and by "like" I mean "a Steeler I didn't absolutely abhor".
His 1,000 receptions (yes, that's the number. Not 1,006 or 998- 1,000 even) rank him 8th all time which says something when you consider that over the years. Remember that for the first six years of his career he had Kordell Stewart and Tommy Maddox throwing him the football.
His production trailing off the last 4 years, aside from an outstanding 2009, we now enter into the "should he hang 'em up" debate. Is it indeed better to burnout than to fade away?
I'm sure there's a role he can fill as someone's third down receiver. You know, the guy who always gets seven yards on third-and-six? The problem is, those guys are very rarely well compensated so we'll see just how much fire there is in the belly.
He's always had the rep as being a dirty player, but Jim Rome hits it right on the head in this video from 2009:
(Editor's note: Usually I don't promote people who take videos of their TV and post them on YouTube, but I'll make an exception here)
Rome is right: Ward was not a dirty player. He played the game the way it was supposed to be played: brash, strong, fierce, and with just a touch of bravado.
In these days of barely being able to tackle players without some sort of flag being thrown, I'll take Ward's brand of football any day of the week.
And twice on Sundays.
Thanks for the sharing of such information we will pass it on to our readers.
Reply to this
This post is different from what I read on most blog. And it have so many valuable things to learn.
Reply to this
This is really fantastic blog i like it.
Reply to this