1-on-1: Heath Miller - November 17, 2022

1-on-1: Heath Miller - November 17, 2022

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right. So here you are retired, you look like
you've enjoyed retirement, and then you find out you're in
the Hall of Honor. It's pretty special. Um. When Mr
Rooney gave me a call this summer, you know, it
wasn't even on my radar that, um, this was a possibility.
And you know, it was hard for me to put
into words how much it meant to me. But after

(00:22):
giving this some thought, it's it's it's been really neat
and I've been able to enjoy it. So I want
you to put it into words. Put it in the
words for me. I just think, you know, when I
when you think about the tradition and the history of
the Steelers organization, and when I when I was here
and I was playing here, I just wanted to to
make a my teammates, uphold the standard with them, and uh,

(00:46):
you know, to make the guys came before us proud
and to be mentioned with them in the same breath
and to be in the same space as them. It's
a it's a huge compliment. With the thirty choice in
the two thousand five nf Bell Draft, the Pittsburgh Steelers
select Heath Miller tight end from Virginia. So you get

(01:07):
to call the Steelers are gonna make you the number
one pick, their first round pick. Yeah, your thoughts of
that day. Tell us about that day and what your
emotions were. Um, well, I try to stay even kill
because everyone's telling me you really don't know what's going
to happen, so don't get your heart set on one place,
which I didn't, but I knew that. The first team
I met with at the combine was the Steelers, and
then I came in here for a visit because I

(01:29):
was injured. I didn't work out at the combine. I
didn't work out at all for any team, so I
didn't know how that would affect me going into the draft.
So that was kind of the unknown. And it got
to a certain point after a couple of teams didn't
select me. Then I'm looking down the list and I'm like, well,
they have a tight end. They have a tight end.
And the next team was the Steelers, So I'm like,
if the Steelers don't take me, i don't know where

(01:50):
I'm going to go after that. So yeah, everything worked
out perfectly. It did, And are you as a rookie
came into a team, it was pretty ready made. How
how was that? And I mean it was as a
young kid coming into a team with that many star players,
what was it like? Well, I knew I had to
get my stuff together and I mess up pressure because yeah,

(02:13):
they were fifteen and one the year before, and um,
you know, there's just so many great players on that team.
And um, like I said, I didn't want to let
the team down. I didn't want to let those guys
down because a lot of those guys were on the
back end of their career and you know, this was
their opportunity to finally win a Super Bowl. And so yeah,
when I stepped in the huddle, I knew that, um,

(02:34):
you know, it was a good kind of pressure that
I needed to meet the standard that they expected and
and earned their trust and respect.