TAMPA, Fla. | There was Santonio Holmes, in the moment, and there&#8217;s no counting how many times he had practiced this, no guessing how often he had dreamed this precise dream. The football came fast and high. His feet were close to the sidelines. The whole blessed country was watching. It was the Super Bowl. All he had to do was catch the ball.</p><p>Of course, Holmes always believed he would catch the ball if he got the chance. Don&#8217;t we all believe that? That&#8217;s the beautiful thing about sports, the thing that brings us all closer. The players out there may be bigger, stronger, faster. But in the end, we all want to believe the same thing, right? We all want to believe that, in our own way, we would catch the ball to win the Super Bowl.</p><p>What a game. Do you remember when the Super Bowl games were annual jokes, yearly blowouts played between funny commercials? Suddenly, a few years ago, the games started to become tense and wonderful. Mike Jones tackled Kevin Dyson a yard short of the goal line. Adam Vinatieri made the long field goal. He made the field goal again. Eli Manning threw the ball and David Tyree caught it against his helmet. Every year&#8217;s game seemed to top the last.</p><p>Then, there was this one: Pittsburgh vs. Arizona. What a game. There were so many great plays, too many to remember. There was Arizona receiver Larry Fitzgerald catching the ball over the top of a Steelers defender. There was Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger running around and throwing good passes while dragging Cardinals defenders the way the honeymoon car drags tin cans.</p><p>There was Pittsburgh&#8217;s James Harrison making what might go down as the most remarkable play in Super Bowl history, a 100-yard interception return that ended the first half, a stumbling, rambling, teetering masterpiece that seemed to start and stop seven different times but did not stop until he leaped helmet-first into the end zone.</p><p>And there was Fitzgerald one more time &#8212; no receiver has ever dominated a playoffs the way Fitzgerald has dominated this one &#8212; and he caught the pass over the middle, sprinted the last 64 yards, scored the touchdown that gave the amazing Arizona Cardinals a three-point lead with 2:37 remaining. It had been 61 years (and three different home cities) since the Cardinals won a championship.</p><p>&#8220;Yeah,&#8221; Fitzgerald would say. &#8220;I thought we were going to win.&#8221;</p><p>That took us to Santonio Holmes&#8217; moment. He walked into the Pittsburgh huddle to start the Steelers&#8217; final drive, and he would claim to say this to Roethlisberger: &#8220;Ben, I want the ball in my hands no matter what, no matter where it is.&#8221;</p><p>Did he really say that? Holmes is just a third-year wide receiver. He had never led the Steelers in receptions. He had never been a team leader like his fellow receiver Hines Ward. The words don&#8217;t seem to fit.</p><p>But . . . there was always something about Holmes, a sort of determination that you could not help but notice. &#8220;Santonio is a guy who just loves to deliver in the big moments,&#8221; Steelers coach Mike Tomlin would say. And this was something everyone on the Steelers understood. Holmes was hungry to be the hero.</p><p>&#8220;There was a couple of guys grabbing me,&#8221; Holmes would say, &#8220;and they were telling me, &#8216;Ten (his number), you are going to be the guy to make a play for the team. Don&#8217;t give up on it.&#8217; I almost lost it for a minute.&#8221;</p><p>Sure, maybe it came from how he grew up. His mother was 16 when he was born in Belle Glade, Fla. They lived in a housing project. To entertain reporters, Holmes sometimes would tell stories about how he chased rabbits through the mud. There was nothing else to do in their little town, and they could get three dollars per rabbit.