Speaker 1: All right. So here you are retired, you look like
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed retirement, and then you find out you're in
Speaker 1: the Hall of Honor. It's pretty special. Um. When Mr
Speaker 1: Rooney gave me a call this summer, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't even on my radar that, um, this was a possibility.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was hard for me to put
Speaker 1: into words how much it meant to me. But after
Speaker 1: giving this some thought, it's it's it's been really neat
Speaker 1: and I've been able to enjoy it. So I want
Speaker 1: you to put it into words. Put it in the
Speaker 1: words for me. I just think, you know, when I
Speaker 1: when you think about the tradition and the history of
Speaker 1: the Steelers organization, and when I when I was here
Speaker 1: and I was playing here, I just wanted to to
Speaker 1: make a my teammates, uphold the standard with them, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to make the guys came before us proud
Speaker 1: and to be mentioned with them in the same breath
Speaker 1: and to be in the same space as them. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a huge compliment. With the thirty choice in
Speaker 1: the two thousand five nf Bell Draft, the Pittsburgh Steelers
Speaker 1: select Heath Miller tight end from Virginia. So you get
Speaker 1: to call the Steelers are gonna make you the number
Speaker 1: one pick, their first round pick. Yeah, your thoughts of
Speaker 1: that day. Tell us about that day and what your
Speaker 1: emotions were. Um, well, I try to stay even kill
Speaker 1: because everyone's telling me you really don't know what's going
Speaker 1: to happen, so don't get your heart set on one place,
Speaker 1: which I didn't, but I knew that. The first team
Speaker 1: I met with at the combine was the Steelers, and
Speaker 1: then I came in here for a visit because I
Speaker 1: was injured. I didn't work out at the combine. I
Speaker 1: didn't work out at all for any team, so I
Speaker 1: didn't know how that would affect me going into the draft.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of the unknown. And it got
Speaker 1: to a certain point after a couple of teams didn't
Speaker 1: select me. Then I'm looking down the list and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: they have a tight end. They have a tight end.
Speaker 1: And the next team was the Steelers, So I'm like,
Speaker 1: if the Steelers don't take me, i don't know where
Speaker 1: I'm going to go after that. So yeah, everything worked
Speaker 1: out perfectly. It did, And are you as a rookie
Speaker 1: came into a team, it was pretty ready made. How
Speaker 1: how was that? And I mean it was as a
Speaker 1: young kid coming into a team with that many star players,
Speaker 1: what was it like? Well, I knew I had to
Speaker 1: get my stuff together and I mess up pressure because yeah,
Speaker 1: they were fifteen and one the year before, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's just so many great players on that team.
Speaker 1: And um, like I said, I didn't want to let
Speaker 1: the team down. I didn't want to let those guys
Speaker 1: down because a lot of those guys were on the
Speaker 1: back end of their career and you know, this was
Speaker 1: their opportunity to finally win a Super Bowl. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: when I stepped in the huddle, I knew that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a good kind of pressure that
Speaker 1: I needed to meet the standard that they expected and
Speaker 1: and earned their trust and respect.