Hines Ward Hard Quotations

I can't even begin to tell you how do good this feels ... especially after how our season ended last year. Nobody believed in us except the guys in this locker room. All our hard work has paid off. We're going to the Super Bowl.

We have to stay away from the negative plays. The third-and-longs, those are hard to overcome. We overcame a couple of them last year but last year we were a great team with second-and-short, third-and-short.

We dominated ... and we still lost. Hard to forget that one.

That's just a matter of Ben trusting me to find a hole for him and working my way hard through the coverage. He found me, and it was a big conversion for us.

Everybody hurts when you lose. But he takes it hard.

We have a guy that when it's time to play around, he's joking with the players. But when it's time for business, to get on that field and get better, he's all about business. We respect that. It makes you want to go out and fight even harder for the guy.

For us, we don't get caught up in statistics as much. As players, the team MVP is the guy who exemplifies hard work at practices, gives it his all on Sundays and is the guy to get the guys up.

To me, it's like you put in all this hard work, and we didn't capitalize on it. When you look at it, we had a great year.

Initially we did not know what to expect out of him. He kind of got thrown into the fire and it is kind of hard to really see and envision what a rookie can do, because not too many rookie quarterbacks can come into the league like he did and win ball games like he did.

Jerome has inspired each individual on this team in some form or way. He kind of inspires us to go out and play hard so we can get him that Super Bowl ring and end on a great note.

It's the hardest thing I've ever been through. It's amazing how my season started off with my contract situation, and now I end up with the opportunity to play in the Super Bowl. I would have never imagined that it would turn out the way it did.

Relieved? Yes, ... I dont wish this on anybody. It was very hard to go out onto the field with peace of mind knowing that youre so close. I can go into the season focused now.