In just his second season in the NFL, Steelers safety Troy Polamalu was named to the AFC Pro Bowl team. Polamalu led the Steelers in inteceptions with six and was second in tackles with 101.
Chris Harlan - Beaver County Times Sports Staff
01/21/2005
PITTSBURGH - Troy Polamalu freely admits he's not your typical professional football player, more interested in growing flowers than buying sports utility vehicles. And the 23-year-old is perfectly fine with that.
He's arguably the Steelers most-vicious hitter on the field, and without doubt the most polite player off it. How does he reconcile the two? Polamalu points squarely to his Samoan heritage and, more importantly, his religious faith.
"I try to play with the passion I feel I've lived my life with," he said. "... I think that you have to play like that as a Christian. I think God calls upon Christian football players to play with passion, just like the life you live."When he levels a receiver, well, that's his way of giving thanks.
Polamalu says his beliefs and performance are intertwined. As his faith has grown, he says, so have his football skills. While living in California, he attended the Assembly of God in Orange County; sometimes four or five times a week. He says he never watched much football on television, so he never really watched how a strong safety was supposed to play. His talents are instinctual. His talents are God-given. "As time progressed, my faith grew stronger (and) my confidence grew stronger," Polamalu said. "All of them are pretty much correlated. God blessed me. (Allowing me) to be very successful (at football), and for (athletic success) to be correlated to my faith."
Now only in his second season, Polamalu is considered one of the league's best safeties, earning one of two available strong safety spots on the conference's Pro Bowl team. Only Baltimore's Ed Reed, the league's defensive player of the year, had more interceptions. He took the other Pro Bowl spot.
Rodney Harrison, bumped off the Pro Bowl team by Polamalu, will start at strong safety for the New England Patriots during Sunday's AFC Championship Game at Heinz Field. He said this week he felt slighted. That he, an 11-year veteran, should have made next month's all-star game in Hawaii.
Did he expect that to rile the soft-spoken Steeler?
"I'm not really into reading papers or reading what they're saying about us," Polamalu said. "I think the game speaks for itself."
Polamalu is second on the Steelers with 101 tackles and leads with five interceptions since winning the starting spot this summer. He stepped in front of a Chad Pennington pass during last Sunday's playoff victory over the New York Jets, setting up the Steelers' first touchdown.They'll need another outstanding day Sunday. Polamalu will again miss a service at the church he found here in Pittsburgh but hopes to show everyone how much he's been blessed.
"(My faith) has everything to do with my performance," he said. "Whether it's good or bad, it definitely motivates me to go out and glorify God. It's pretty much all I say to myself throughout every play, before every game. Whether win or loss, I'm definitely going to give the same effort out there."
His teammates describe a humble person who's focused, serious and always in bed early. His road-trip roommate, Ike Taylor, says Polamalu's two favorite things are "to eat fruit" and "go to sleep early." But free safety Chris Hope says there's more to his teammate's personality than the public sees."He's a little sneaky," Hope said. "He's quiet but he does a lot of joke-cracking and little pranks. He does them on the low-low. I guess, if he feels comfortable with you, that's when he opens up to you. Me and him laugh and play all the time. A lot of people don't see that because he's a serious closed-in person."
Polamalu thanks reporters who notice his good plays. He apologizes when asking someone to move so he can get to his locker. And he delivers lines with a dry wit that often fools.
Where did he meet his fiancé? "I met her at my draft party," Polamalu says, then starts laughing. "I kill people with that one."
Well, maybe not everyone.Actually, his fiancé is the sister of a former teammate at the University of Southern California. Polamalu was a two-time all-American for the Trojans before becoming the Steelers first-round draft pick before last season.
Was Theodora Holmes impressed? Not really. According to Polamalu, his girlfriend of four years doesn't really like football. And, to him, that's important.
Football isn't his only focus. He thought about becoming a history teacher."I do share different passions, you know: woodworking, flowers," he said, seemingly the beginning of another one of his jokes. This time, though, there's no punch line. "I've started getting into orchids and trying to learn how to cultivate orchids. Wine. Trying to learn how to grow wine. Different things like that. Which, I guess, isn't your stereotypical football player but different things interest me."
While teammates were arriving at training camp in Hummers and Escalades, Polamalu arrived in a Kia: sticker price $12,000. He insists he's not interested in showing off the millions the Steelers invested in him two Aprils ago.
Since then the Steelers have built their strong safety's role to fit Polamalu's instinctual ability; often pulling the 5-foot-10, 212-pounder forward for run-stopping. Typically, his pass-coverage responsibilities are minimal. Basically, just make the play.
Coming out of college, his critics said he couldn't cover receivers down field. But, after Sunday's game, defensive coach Dick LeBeau, a former cornerback himself, said Polamalu could move to cornerback now if needed."Actually I just stepped on the scale a few minutes ago and was just saying, 'Man, I need to lose some weight so I can play some more man-to-man (defense),'" Polamalu said. "That's definitely a great compliment considering the things that were said about me coming into the NFL."
With his long hair draped out the back of his helmet, he's easily recognizable and has grabbed national attention. The hair, though, has no special meaning; he says he stopped cutting it while in college and just hasn't since - even though he's had it pulled a couple times. But his future mother-in-law, of Greek decent, says it helps him look strong."My fiancé's mother told me that every great warrior, throughout all of the world's history has had long hair," Polamalu said. "Starting with the samurais, the Greeks, the American Indians, the Chinese, you name it, they've all had long hair. I don't know why it's so different nowadays to have long hair."Not that Polamalu has ever been worried with what everyone else is doing.
Chris Harlan can be reached online at charlan@timesonline.com.
©Beaver County Times Allegheny Times 2005
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