A: These are things that you get dealt that you can’t expect and you don’t know what to do with it, but everybody’s been helping out everybody. That’s something that I think I took from it. We’re playing football and it’s much different than the natural disaster and coming back from that. We didn’t perform out best last week and we know that we got kind of lucky with the win in certain cases, so I think that we’re coming back with the mentality that we need to rebuild, start from scratch, the fundamentals need to be perfect and persevere through the tough times that come on the field.
Q: Is it safe to say that if you guys play well it will help the people in this area?
A: Maybe emotionally, maybe, but at the end of the day, we’re playing a football game and these people have lost their houses and have damaged everything they own. If they can even watch the game, then hopefully we can give them something to be happy about. They have a lot of problems that are tough for us to help with.
Q: You faced cancer, it’s a battle back?
A: Yeah.
Q: Does this equate to that?
A: I think it some ways it does because you have to start all over. You’ve basically put your life on hold. You take everything, and it stops in its track. You say, “Now where am I going to go from here?” You lose your house, you lose everything that you’ve ever had, you have to put it in the tank and say, “That’s it. That’s my life,” or you can say, “where do I go from here. How do I fight back? How do I regain my possessions? How do I rebuild my life?” I think that’s the same thing that cancer patients and cancer survivors have to do. If they get a bad diagnosis, are they going to let it destroy them and defeat them or are they going to take one foot and put it in front of the other and fight back.
Q: Is that the fighting spirit Coach was talking about?
A: It is. That’s the fighting spirit.
Q: Is this game more meaningful to you because you’re playing on behalf of all of these people as well?
A: I think so. It’s kind of interesting; the first game of my career was against the Redskins on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. You felt that emotion that day in Washington and I think that when we go on the field this Sunday, you’re going to feel that emotion again where, this is a strong country and everybody in the stadium, whether they’re Pittsburgh fans or New York fans, they’re going to be pulling for the people who are fighting back from the storm.
