TAMPA – Even after two-plus hours of the most brutally physical football game perhaps all season, Ryan Clark’s hit on Baltimore’s Willis McGahee stood above anything yet seen in the AFC Championship game.
“I remember running toward him, hitting him,” said Clark, the Steelers safety who still has a gap of about 90 seconds in his recollection of that day. “I remember sitting down [on the bench], and them telling me that he was on the field.
“When I sat down. I asked the trainers, ‘Could I get up to go check on him?’ They said I wasn’t really in the position or the condition to go check on anybody.”
The same way we erupt in debate in Canada every time a hockey player gets injured in a fight, Clark’s hit on McGahee has sparked concern down here – even in football mad America.
McGahee caught a dump pass late in Pittsburgh’s AFC Championship win, turned up field and ran into an oncoming vehicle in the person of Clark. It was the kind of hit that summed up a game that is iconic American football:
A tough, defensive struggle, played on a snowy, cold January day between two traditional powers: Baltimore and Pittsburgh. A berth to the Super Bowl is on the line, and every player is willing and ready to run through and over each other to get their hands on that plane ticket to Tampa.
Clark did exactly what he is paid to do when he steamrolled McGahee. And McGahee, after being labeled two days later as “neurologically sound” by doctors, did not hold a grudge when Clark called on him at the hospital.
“No running back has ever called me after running me over,” Clark said. “It’s something I really understand – it’s football; you’re not intending to hurt anybody.”
Least of all himself.
“The only other thing I remember,” Clark added, “is Troy [Polamalu] rolling me over and asking me 20 questions that I had no answer to. ‘Do you have a concussion?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ He’s like, ‘What do you feel like? Can you see?’ I said: “Troy, why don’t you leave me alone and let me get up?”
Clark lit up New England receiver Wes Welker earlier this season in similar fashion. The last thing he wants to see is for people to use his play as an example for change.
“If they do anything else we’re not going to be able to tackle people,” Clark said. “I would like for them to stop talking about it on TV so much. It gets so much press, I think people begin to believe it is a barbaric sport.
“Every time someone gets hurt, they have to have a debate on First and 10, or ESPN. Was it dirty? Was it legal? They’re starting to make it more than it really is.”
Don’t think Arizona’s top two receivers Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Bolden haven’t seen video of that hit.
“I think it sets a tone, that every level of defence is going to be physical,” Clark said. “Everyone knows about our D-line; everybody knows about our linebackers. We let ‘em know that in the secondary, we will try and play a physical game, and try and knock receives off the ball.”
