Jerome Bettis Team Quotations

But that's nothing new. We're going to be a running team whether it's Ben or Tommy or Charlie at quarterback. And we'll still throw the football, too.

It feels incredible. My team put me on their backs and made sure they wouldn't let me down.

It feels incredible -- my team put me on their backs, and I knew they wouldn't let me down. This has been a great ride, and I've always said that you play this game to win championships, and now that I've got that championship ... I think this is the last stop for 'The Bus.'?

We never played the disrespect angle. We knew what it was. It wasn't disrespect. It was us being the sixth seed, so it wasn't disrespect. No one believed we could do it but us. We didn't feel disrespected, we just knew we were a better football team than people portrayed us to be.

That's a tough thing when you've got a team that's looking at you as a leader and you're a rookie. You've got to develop that. First of all, you have to understand that's expected of you. How do you understand that if you don't know?

You ask why have the Pittsburgh Steelers been a physical, smash-mouth type of a team for so long. I think it's because the team takes the identity of its head coach. He looks for tough players. He looks for physical players. And he doesn't settle for anything less.

No question. I felt, a couple of those years, we had the best team, that was the sad part. All three years, I felt we had the better team (better than the three eventual Super Bowl winners).

This is good for the team, ... It keeps team morale up. Whenever you get a player of his caliber signed, it shows the commitment the organization has to its players. I think it reinforces a positive message that if you go out there and perform on the field, we'll take care of you. I think that makes a very, very conducive environment for us to go out there and work.

It's the reason why I started 13 years ago on this quest, to win a championship. Along the way, I amassed a lot of yards, a lot of Pro Bowls, but none of that was significant because it wasn't the team goal.

It makes it all worthwhile. It makes everything we had to go through as a team and everything I had to go through personally during the course of my career all worth it.

It's disappointing for us. We know we're a better team than that. But everybody is 0-0 now. We did everything we had to do to get in. Now we're in, and let's see what happens.

They just beat the defending champs and, conversely, they watched the film of us losing to that same football team. So they're going to have a lot of confidence saying, 'We just smacked around the team that just beat this team.' You've got to think they'll have some confidence.

It helped us because we have been in those situations, those big games. So, when the big games came this time, we were comfortable in the settings. ... even on the road. We had been there before. That's why you saw a different team -- there was a comfort level.

He's the reason this football team has been able to be so consistent through the years. His philosophy and his makeup decide the makeup of this football team, so we're a physical bunch of guys, tough-minded, because he's a real reflection of that. He's been that way since the day I got here, and our teams have been reflective of that since the day I got here. I think he's been the driving force.

The football team we played was expecting us to the run the football. They did everything assuming we were going to run the football, so we knew we could take advantage of some things.