Steelers CB William Gay keeping mum about future
Steelers cornerback William Gay's 11th NFL season came to end when the team lost in the AFC divisional playoff round. Nine of those seasons have ended short of the Super Bowl, 10 of them, without Gay earning a Super Bowl championship ring.
With age, it's been said, comes perspective. But does more than a decade in the league allow for a season ending short of a Super Bowl any easier to stomach?
“You lace up your cleats, you wanna win the Super Bowl,” Gay, 33, said last week. “You don't want to do it for something else. You want to be able to hoist that Lombardi and see that confetti fall on you.
“Every year is tough. You hate the part about cleaning up your locker. You always want to be the team that cleans their locker with a Super Bowl parade after.”
At his age, following two consecutive seasons of diminished roles on defense and with the Steelers suddenly flush with young defensive backs , was this the final time Gay played for the Steelers?
Gay wouldn't say.
“Look, I didn't even know if I was going to get drafted,” he said. “So to be standing here 11 years, it's a blessing.”
Gay hasn't sat out a regular-season game in his career, playing in all 176. Though he spent the 2012 season with the Arizona Cardinals, Gay has played in all 160 Steelers games he's been a part of.
Including the playoffs, Gay has made it into 175 consecutive games for the Steelers.
Counting his one season in the desert – and discounting the playoff games – Gay has a consecutive games-played streak of 176 that is longest in the NFL among defensive players. Tossing out kickers and punters, Gay trails only Dallas Cowboys tight end Jason Witten (235 games) and Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers (193) in terms of the active ironmen.
“Balls just been bouncing my way, I guess,” Gay said, pointing out that if the concussion he suffered Dec. 6, 2009, would have happened today, the NFL's protocol would not have allowed him to play in the following game (it came four days later on a Thursday). “I've just been blessed.”
Body preservation, of course, is part of the equation, too. And as his career has gone one, Gay has learned to give the body some time off.
“As you get older,” Gay said, “when you get into the offseason, you take it as time to just sit back and just release all the pressure from the ongoing, watching film, the intense prep, getting ready for a Sunday game. You just sit back and breathe a little bit.”
Chris Adamski is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at cadamski@tribweb.com or via Twitter @C_AdamskiTrib.
