Ryan Clark explains how he covered for Troy Polamalu's gambles

Troy Polamalu is revered in Pittsburgh Steelers lore as an instinctive football genius. But behind his Hall of Fame highlight reel was safety partner Ryan Clark, who routinely had to fix the backend coverages Polamalu abandoned when following his instincts.

Appearing on the “Not Just Football with Cam Heyward” podcast with Cam Heyward, Clark revealed what it was really like playing in tandem with Polamalu. Clark recalled a specific game against the Oakland Raiders where Polamalu decided to abandon his assigned quarter coverage to jump a short route.

“Troy comes up to me and goes, ‘RC, we get that formation again. I’mma jump the hitch.’ Whoa, Troy, that means that nobody’s going to be on the seam, Troy. No one’s covering the tight end on the go. He tells me, ‘They’ll never throw it.’ So now I’m effed up. I’m playing the middle like a dummy. We get the formation? Exactly what he thought. They run the formation. He take off 43, to the hitch. Guess what they threw? The seam,” Clark recounted.

Despite the occasional broken assignment, Clark never voiced frustration to Polamalu or defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau. Clark recognized that restricting Polamalu’s freedom would ultimately weaken the team.

“And I never complained to him cuz I never wanted him to feel, cuz he loved me so much, I never want him to feel that him doing and being who God made him to be took away from my ability to feed my family,” Clark explained. “You can’t tell somebody who can fly, right, to wear a weighted vest. It would have made us a worse team.”

Instead, Clark spent hours studying extra film so he could anticipate Polamalu’s gambles and adjust in real time. That selflessness forged a deep bond between the duo, culminating in a poignant moment when Polamalu was elected to Canton.

“When he got into the Hall of Fame, he said, ‘We did it,'” Clark shared. “The fact that he was like, ‘Man, you being who you were allowed me to be who I was’ meant a lot to me.”

This article originally appeared on Steelers Wire: Ryan Clark explains how he covered for Troy Polamalu’s gambles