YinzPitt

I still can’t believe we have to talk about this.  This is frustrating, and it’s going to be a small update.  The seasonal bug has hit me hard and it’s got me down.

Now well all know what Hines Ward said about his quarterback Ben Roethlisberger:

“It’s almost like a 50/50 toss-up in the locker room: Should he play? Shouldn’t he play? It’s really hard to say. I’ve been out there dinged up; the following week, got right back out there. Ben practiced all week. He split time with Dennis Dixon. And then to find out that he’s still having some headaches and not playing and it came down to the doctors didn’t feel that they were going to clear him or not—it’s hard to say. Unless you’re the person [himself]. …I’ve lied to a couple of doctors saying I’m straight, I feel good when I know that I’m not really straight.

“This game is almost like a playoff game. It’s almost a must-win. I could see some players or teammates questioning, like ‘It’s just a concussion. I’ve played with a concussion before.”

Now it seems as if Santonio Holmes has joined the side of Hines Ward with his comments yesterday:

“We would have liked for him to play. If he had the opportunity, he should have played for us, but he didn’t. And we didn’t get the job done.”

Holmes and Ward, you have now entered the selfish zone.  Both of you are incredible idiots, and deserve to be out-casted via the media.  Calling out a quarterback who has put rings on your fingers is more then enough reason to just shut up.  He had a concussion, it didn’t go away, so the doctor did his job and advised him and Tomlin that he shouldn’t play.

End of story, but no.  Selfish player had to be selfish, and speak on their “teams” behalf.  In turn, all of this has now made them “above” the team, and out for themselves.  Dude has a health issue, regardless if he’s a drama queen or not, it’s a brain injury.  Leave it at that.  Maybe Santonio and Ward should read the Wikipedia article about Mike Webster and his multiple concussions:

Webster was proven to have been disabled before retiring from the NFL. After retirement Webster suffered from amnesia, dementia, depression, and acute bone and muscle pain. He lived out of his pickup truck or train stations between Wisconsin and Pittsburgh, even though his friends and former teammates were willing to rent apartments for him. In his last years Webster lived with his youngest son, Garrett, who though only a teenager at the time, had to act as the parent to his own father. Webster’s wife divorced him six months before his death in 2002. He was only 50 years old.

After death, Mike Webster was diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease. It has been speculated that Webster’s ailments were due to wear and tear sustained over his playing career; some doctors estimated he had been in the equivalent of “25,000 automobile crashes” in over 25 years of playing football at the high school, college and professional levels. Protective equipment, in particular helmets, were inferior during Webster’s time, and defensive players sometimes employed a “head slap” move that was then accepted, although illegal.

Nicknamed “Iron Mike”, Webster’s reputation for durability led him to play even though injured. Despite rumors, Webster never admitted to using anabolic steroids at points during his career. He did state, however, that if he did take steroids, “they were legal at the time”.

Even with the accumulative injuries Webster acquired, it was shown that concussions back then created most of the mess he was in.  So there you go Ward, you go get all those concussions that are easy to play with.  Idiot.  Every time this man speaks I like him less and less*.

*UPDATE*

Hines Ward posted this message on his facebook today, apologizing for what he said:

To my Steeler nation and my fb and twitter fans; I just finished an extensive conversation with Ben. We spoke about the interview in which I made the #1 mistake in doing a interview, I did it based off of emotions. It’s interesting how people interpreted my interview. Some say I threw Ben under the bus, some say I w as just making a general statement about about concussions.
I would never question a man’s toughness playing in a STEELER unif. I didn’t mean to cause such a stir. My frustration was based on the fact that this was a big game for us to stay in the playoff picture and having Ben out there gave us our best opp to win in Balt. I was frustrated because there was no indication of… Ben not being able to play because he practiced a normal routine this week (wed, thurs and fri).
Some of the guys didn’t find out he wasn’t playing until saturday and getting that news on the day before the big game didn’t go to well. Now as a veteran guy on the team you can see how upset that made a lot of us considering we were going down into the lions den in Baltimore without our fearless leader.
In the locker room some questions came about playing with a concussion, that is where my 50/50 comment came from based on players opinions. Some say they’ve played after having a concussion and some say you don’t wanna mess with that. half of the guys on the team have had concussions at least once in their careers. …But in football it’s a tough decision on whether one should play or not play.
I know Ben wanted to play this game but the docs told him he’s down, and with that we trust our docs with their decisions. We would never jeopardize anyone’s health for a game of football. Life is way to precious. One thing about Ben, he is a WINNER. We just wanted this game so badly.
So the moral of this story is not to do an interview based off of emotions and I made that mistake and I have apologized to Ben for that. Ben and I are cool and always will be. We will not let this come between us, our talk was very productive.
I wanted to set the record straight with my fans first because the media will not get comments about this situation from me, it’s resolved and we are focusing on Oakland and getting back on the right track. Hats off to Dennis! He played his heart out. He won over a lot of guys on our team. He is gonna be a star! 86