It's been three months since Troy Polamalu got a knock on his door at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel from David Baker informing him he had been voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
For most, it's the crowing achievement of an NFL career, affirmation that they are among the best to ever play the game.
For Polamalu, it's quite a different feeling.
His humility is as legendary as the plays he made on the football field to earn him the game's highest honor. But much like when he was voted All-American in college at USC, or to the Pro Bowl with the Steelers, or even the College Football Hall of Fame, his thought process remains the same.
"I’m sorry if this doesn’t come out right. I want to be as frank as possible, but I’ve always felt like a fraud," Polamalu told me Monday afternoon over the phone. "I always felt like I never deserved any of the awards that I got because I had so much respect for other people that I never equated myself with them. When it comes to receiving any sort of these awards, it never felt authentic to me. I always felt like a fraud.
"It has always been hard for me to accept because I feel like when I stand up and they’re like, ‘Oh dude, you’re this and you’re that,’ I’m like, ‘Oh no, you don’t know me.’ That’s where I feel, I’m not sure. Has it sunk in? Not really. I’ve always had a strange feeling about it. I honestly felt like I never deserved any of these awards anyway. So, when you tell me I’m up there with Jim Brown and people like that, I’m like, ‘OK, here you go again Troy, you’re fooling everybody once again.’ You were an All-American. You’re a college hall of famer, you’re this and that. It’s like somebody is going to figure out sooner or later that I’m a fraud in all of this."
Why? Quarterbacks, whether in college or the NFL, never figured him out.
That's a big reason why Polamalu was honored as he was in Miami in February. It's the reason why this August in Canton, Ohio, he will stand on a stage at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium and be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He earned it during a 12-year career that saw him help the Steelers win two Super Bowls and go to another, a career that saw him named All-Pro six times, to the Pro Bowl eight times and earn a spot on the NFL's All-Decade Team for the 2000s.
"If you talk about it in that perspective, I can explain it away so easily," Polamalu told me. "We were literally, truly a team defense. What I feel sometimes, is that, because our defense was so good, they have to recognize the era with somebody. Truthfully, if you want to get down to the Xs and Os of how our defense operated, it had to take every single piece equally. I truly was one of 11. I didn’t carry a greater load than the other guys. My responsibility was the same. People get more notoriety for I guess maybe being in certain positions, but I truly felt that all of these moving parts in this defense had to take place."
He continued, crediting all of his former teammates and explaining how they all fit into defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau's scheme.
"Aaron (Smith) had to be that good for me to be this good. I had to be good in order for Aaron to be that good, in order for Casey (Hampton) to be that good. If I wasn’t that good, then they couldn’t be that good and vice versa," Polamalu said. "That’s what is so interesting about our defense. That’s what Coach LeBeau preached. Team defense. Team defense. So, when it broke down, ‘Troy, you broke the defense down. You didn’t play team defense.’ These sort of things, in my opinion, are why I think it’s hard for me to accept it too, because when you go up and down the line of how our defense worked and the philosophy of our defense, there’s nobody in any era that would fit better.
"Ike (Taylor) had to be the way Ike is in order for our defense to work. He had to be a lockdown corner. He had to be a tackling corner. Nobody is like Ike ever in this game. Casey, the same way. Joe Greene can’t do what Casey does as much as Casey can’t do what Joe Greene does. Nobody played that nose guard and innovated that like (he did). Those three techniques, defensive end positions, nobody played them like Aaron, Brett (Keisel), Kimo (von Oelhoffen). Those outside linebacker positions, the leadership that Joey (Porter) was able to bring to us, the confidence. The same goes for James (Harrison). Their personalities just molded together so perfectly for us."
The fact remains Polamalu was perhaps the transcendent player of that defense. From his first season in 2003 through his final one in 2014, the Steelers ranked in the top 10 in the NFL in scoring defense seven times, leading the league four times. They also ranked in the top 10 in fewest yards allowed 10 times, leading the league five times in that span.
After his retirement, the defense wasn't the same. While many of his great teammates retired, it was the retirement of Polamalu after the 2014 season that spelled the end of that era of great Steelers defense. It took the Steelers until 2019 to regain some of that defensive swagger.
All that with Polamalu, coupled with an offense that was efficient and dangerous in its own right, led to the team making three trips to the Super Bowl from 2005 through 2010, winning two of them.
It was a special time in Pittsburgh, right up there with the group that won four in six seasons in the '70s.
Polamalu's induction into the Hall of Fame this summer, where he'll join Jerome Bettis as the second member of those teams in Canton, will be a celebration of that, even if he doesn't feel deserving.
"The culture was beautiful," Polamalu said. "Everything molded together so well for us. If anything, I wish we could have done better. Now that we look at it in hindsight, how special that time was, it’s beautiful."
