PITTSBURGH — Honestly, I felt uncomfortable broaching the topic with Joe Flacco last week from Philadelphia Eagles training camp. And to be fair, Flacco wound up winning his share of battles against the Steelers.
But not Jan. 18, 2009.
That was the Steelers' day. That was Troy Polamalu's day. Maybe more than any other, it came to illustrate Polamalu's unparalleled brilliance, which will be celebrated Saturday when he is enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Do you know of another player who literally leapt over the line to stop a quarterback sneak and made a spectacular interception return for a touchdown in the same game — any game, let alone one with a trip to the Super Bowl at stake?
Me neither.
Polamalu could potentially impact more pages of an offensive playbook than any player I've seen. He was an improvisational genius, playing his own particular brand of football based on rhythm and instinct and something much deeper than "these guys usually throw to the flat on third-and-3."
"When he made his mind up, he went full speed and trusted it," Flacco said by phone. "That's what I remember: He would commit, and it's amazing how often he was right."
"The Leap" happened late in the first quarter of the AFC championship game that night — Jan. 18, 2009 — on fourth-and-1 at the Steelers' 34. Polamalu went full Superman. While still in flight, having jumped the Ravens line, he pulled down Flacco from behind.
The Steelers would score their only offensive touchdown of the game almost immediately afterward, so it proved to be a seismic momentum swing. Mike Tomlin later told the NFL Network show "America's Game" that whenever he thinks of Polamalu, he will think of that play.
As the narrator of "America's Game" put it, "Most Steelers fans will think of another play: the one that decided the AFC championship."
Indeed, Polamalu's masterpiece — maybe not by degree of difficulty but certainly by imprint in our memory banks — happened much later with the Ravens in the midst of an improbable comeback behind the rookie quarterback Flacco.
Once down 13-0, Baltimore trailed by two, 16-14, with just under seven minutes left. Terrell Suggs had just sacked Ben Roethlisberger. The Ravens had momentum.
Polamalu knew it, too. On the same show, he explained his mindset going into the series.
"On the huge stage of the AFC championship game, you have a rookie quarterback, and you have a rookie coach [John Harbaugh] on their sidelines, and you're thinking, 'Wow, what a great time for them to come back and kick a field goal and beat their rivals who they've lost to twice [already that season]," Polamalu said. "All these things are running through your head, [like] 'That would be a great story for them.'
"But, ah, it didn't happen that way."
Shortly after Flacco hit tight end Todd Heap for a first down on second-and-12, a Lamar Woodley sack left the Ravens with a third-and-13 at their 29 with 4:39 left.
And this is really where our story begins.
Dick LeBeau, the Steelers' longtime, legendary defensive coordinator and the man Polamalu chose as his presenter Saturday, has photographic recall of what happened next.
LeBeau, 83, recounted the details in a phone conversation last week. He remembered Polamalu coming to the sidelines after Woodley's sack.
"It was looking like we needed to get off the field or we were not going to win the game," LeBeau recalled. "I said, 'Troy, we need to get off the field, and I'm pretty sure the ball's going to Heap. I'm gonna put you on him. You need to get the ball or knock it down. He said, 'Gotcha.' That's all he said: 'Gotcha.'
"He got me, all right. He got Flacco, is who he got."
It turned out the Ravens left Heap in to pass block. LeBeau believes that was because they were concerned Polamalu would blitz (James Farrior did, instead). Polamalu started in the center of the field and studied Flacco's eyes as the play developed.
Flacco hoped receiver Mark Clayton, running a late crossing route, would keep Polamalu occupied in the middle. No such luck. Flacco was glued to Derrick Mason up the right side, just past the first-down marker. Mason briefly broke open against William Gay.
"I'm sure Flacco thought he had a completion," LeBeau said.
He did have that thought, but only for a millisecond. That is when the horror of the moment hit him. James Harrison hit him, too, crashing into Flacco's plant leg just as he released the ball.
"I was young, and I probably kept my eyes on the corner stop (Mason's route) too long," Flacco recalled. "I was staring at him a split second too long, and I think Troy just read my eyes. When the ball was halfway there, I was like, 'Oh geez, here we go.'
"I remember I was the last guy back, too, and he just hopped around me like it was nothing."
The interception itself was one thing — a leaping, twisting snag at the 40-yard line. The return was quite another.
The return lives forever in Steelers lore. It remains the greatest play in Heinz Field history and very likely the second-greatest Steelers play ever perpetrated in a home game, behind only The Immaculate Reception (apologies to Antonio Brown here, but his great goal-line catch against Baltimore did not get the Steelers to a Super Bowl).
Polamalu couldn't believe he caught the ball.
"There may have been a split second where it was like, 'Oh my gosh, I got the ball in my hands. What do I do?' " he recounted on "America's Game."
What he did was race to the 25, with that iconic mane of hair blowing in the wind, then cut all the way across the field, as he often did. He cut back again near the opposite sideline and sprinted to the end zone past Flacco and guard Chris Chester, raising the ball to the heavens as if it were a gift to the football gods.
No doubt many of the 65,300 in attendance that night would describe the play as a religious experience.
"This place is on fire!" exclaimed play-by-play man Bill Hillgrove.
Polamalu immediately pointed up to the crowd. He was thinking of his newborn son, Paisios, who was attending his first game.
"The first thing that crossed my mind was to point up at him and wave at him, like, 'Look, son,' " Polamalu said. "So it was pretty cool."
Flacco, incidentally, was no stranger to elite safety play. He faced Ed Reed every day in practice, after all, and Reed might have been the best ball hawk in NFL history. But Reed played a different position than Polamalu — free safety — and had a different style. One difference Flacco noted was that while Reed would keep his eyes glued to the backfield, Polamalu would sometimes turn his back to the quarterback and follow his gut.
Also, while Reed was the classic center fielder, Polamalu could line up as a linebacker and play like one.
Was there anybody like him?
"No," Flacco said. "It'd be tough to compare somebody to him."
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