‘Passion’ made Faneca great
Smoothed over any hard feelings with Roethlisberger a few years ago
Now that he’s been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it’s easy to look back and laugh because Alan Faneca could be brutally honest when he was with the
Steelers.
There was his final season in Pittsburgh, when he initially requested a trade and later made it known he wouldn’t be back due to a difficult contract negotiation. There was the coaching transition from Bill Cowher to Mike Tomlin, when the six-time first-team All-Pro guard openly expressed disappointment that the team didn’t promote from within. But even before all that was his famously candid assessment about Ben Roethlisberger ahead of the 2004 firstround pick’s first NFL start.
Faneca, smarting from the loss of starting quarterback Tommy Maddox to an elbow injury in Week 2, bristled at a reporter asking if it would be exciting to have the new guy start under center. No, Faneca responded, because who would want to go to work with a “little, young kid who’s just out of college?”
At the time an accomplished, 27-year-old Faneca in his prime had no idea that Roethlisberger, then 22,
would help guide the Steelers to a perfect record through the rest of the regular season. And Faneca certainly couldn’t have imagined that the hotshot rookie who replaced Maddox would go on to win two Super Bowl rings and cement himself as a surefire Hall of Famer.
When Faneca interned as a Steelers assistant coach at training camp a few years ago, those two buried any bit of bad blood that might have lingered from the quote that didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the future franchise quarterback.
“He saw where I was coming from at the time,” Faneca said Thursday on a Zoom call ahead of taking his place in the latest Hall of Fame class.
“When I said those words, they were just really out of passion for the team and not really Ben himself or a slight against him. It was just about where we as a team were trying to get.”
Faneca, much more diplomatic now at 44, acknowledged that he didn’t want to paint Maddox’s injury as an “exciting” moment for the team back in 2004. He went on to win Super Bowl XL with Roethlisberger at quarterback and, as he prepares for enshrinement in Canton, that “young kid” isn’t so little anymore, but he is still the face of the Steelers.
And isn’t it funny how Father Time works? When the Steelers convene for training camp next week, it will be Roethlisberger, an 18-year veteran, who won’t know what he’s getting out of the unit in front of him. The Steelers are youthful, inexperienced and mostly unproven on the line, especially now after the abruptrelease of starter David DeCastro, the best blocker the franchise had seen since Faneca, a guard who even wore the same No. 66 jersey.
With Maurkice Pouncey retired, Roethlisberger might even be taking snaps from a rookie at center. If he needs any advice on how to forge a relationship with Kendrick Green — or what not to say — perhaps he can call up Faneca, who’s now the head coach at Cox High School in Virginia Beach, Va.
“We didn’t really dive too deep into it,” Faneca said of his conversation with Roethlisberger a few summers ago. “I forget the situation we were talking about, but it was basically how he was the older guy in the group now and he’s the guy trying to pull some young guys along and get them up to his level. He understood. He said, ‘I realize where you were coming from now, now that I am where you were.’ ”
Naturally, Faneca wasn’t the only stalwart of that offense who didn’t quite know what to expect at the dawn of the Roethlisberger era. Wide receiver Hines Ward was on that 15-1 team, too, and Aug. 8 he’ll be Faneca’s presenter for the induction ceremony for the class of 2021.
Faneca had to wait five years to be selected, but he still believes Ward will eventually join him with a gold jacket. He didn’t all-out stump for his former teammate, but did explain why it meant a lot to choose Ward.
“He will get to Canton. It’s just a matter of time, I feel. He is a Hall of Famer, it’s just a matter of when he gets in,” Faneca said. “The reason I picked Hines was he and I had so many conversations and so many discussions over time and just really bonded over those moments that we grew up together. We came in together out of college, grew up in the Steelers organization together, bringing the team along to where we were. We just had a really good bond, and that’s where it ended up, man. I just wanted somebody who represented me and the same mentality.”