The weekly series “I Scored a Touchdown” spotlights the stories of players who reached the end zone on the Super Bowl stage, offering powerful features that will appear across ESPN shows and platforms. ESPN will showcase 61 players ahead of Super Bowl LXI, ESPN’s first Super Bowl production, with a new player unveiled mostly on a weekly basis until Feb. 14, 2027. Former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward and his TD in Super Bowl XL is featured on May 24. Here is more to his story from ESPN’s Brooke Pryor:
Antwaan Randle El’s eyes lit up when he heard the playcall, and then the Steelers wide receiver felt a brief flit of butterflies.
Though it worked earlier in the season against the Cleveland Browns, the play was unsuccessful several times during practice in the week leading up to Super Bowl XL at Detroit’s Ford Field on Feb. 5, 2006. Even offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt was apprehensive about it, and he asked head coach Bill Cowher if they should run the play.
But after Willie Parker’s 75-yard touchdown run earlier in the game primed the Seattle Seahawks safeties to bite down, Cowher believed it was the right play for the moment, the play that would seal the organization’s fifth Vince Lombardi Trophy.
ESPN’s ‘I Scored A Touchdown’Ahead of Super Bowl LXI on ESPN/ABC on Feb. 14, 2027, we’re spotlighting the stories of players who reached the end zone on the Super Bowl stage:
• Giants’ David Tyree in SB XLII
• Eagles’ A.J. Brown in SB LIX
• Steelers’ Santonio Holmes in SB XLIII
• Dolphins’ Larry Csonka in SB VIII
• Broncos’ Demaryius Thomas in SB XLVIII
MORE: ‘I Scored a Touchdown’ series
“Hey, there’s no practice or game tomorrow,” Cowher told Whisenhunt at the time, an exchange Randle El mentioned he learned about later. “This is it.”
And it was.
After a tap of encouragement from mentor and fellow wide receiver Hines Ward to calm Randle El, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger pitched the ball left to Parker. Parker handed the ball off to Randle El on the reverse, and sprinting to his right, Randle El then delivered a perfect spiral 43 yards downfield to Ward, who slipped behind cornerback Marcus Trufant and was open in large part thanks to a block by Roethlisberger.
“I was excited that it got called,” Randle El, who is now a wide receivers coach for the Chicago Bears, told ESPN recently. “I was like, man, I was trying not to jump offsides, false start or nothing like that. I was just trying to make sure, ‘Hey, let the play happen.’ And it went real smooth, and he hauled it in.”
On the other end of the play, Ward couldn’t believe he was so open.
“I remember just telling myself, ‘Please, just don’t — just look this ball all the way in,'” Ward mentioned. “Antwaan Randle El threw a laser. I mean, literally, the ball was a tight spiral right into the left pocket of my shirt, man. … Catching the ball, it was like slow motion.”
Catch secured, the receiver leaped over the goal line and joined an special fraternity of men who have scored a touchdown in the Super Bowl.
“Instinctively, it just took me back to being a kid on the playground,” Ward mentioned in an interview with ESPN. “You see me take, like, two or three hops into the end zone. I didn’t know what to do, you know? And words can’t describe scoring a touchdown in the Super Bowl. And being in Detroit, seeing the sea of black and gold, waving the Terrible Towel, words can’t describe that feeling.”
Trailing behind him, Randle El lifted his hands toward the sky as he shouted and thanked God for the moment. Years later, Randle El can’t help but laugh at Ward’s celebration.
Antwaan Randle El was the Big Ten MVP as Indiana’s QB in 2001, but the most important pass he ever threw was as a wide receiver to Hines Ward in Super Bowl XL. Allen Kee/NFLPhotoLibrary”The skip,” he mentioned with a chuckle, reminiscing on the play 20 years later. “I remember him catching it and again, straightening up because I thought I had overthrown it, but I also thought, ‘That’s all you got?'”But you got to remember, this is a guy who has scored plenty of touchdowns throughout his career. At the time there wasn’t a whole lot of celebrating going on in terms of the touchdowns afterwards, but it was just an exciting time.”And sometimes you get in a moment where it’s like you don’t really have nothing because you’re not shocked yourself, but you are like, ‘Oh my goodness, this just happened’ type deal.”The moment felt extra surreal for the pair because Ward had become a mentor to Randle El after the ex-Indiana quarterback was selected by the Steelers in the second round of the 2002 NFL draft. Like Randle El, Ward was also a quarterback earlier in his career, and after being picked by the Steelers in the third round of the 1998 draft, Ward set the blueprint of a jack-of-all-trades offensive player in Pittsburgh.”He was like my little bro, because he was a former quarterback at Indiana, and all his whole goal in life was to throw a touchdown in the NFL,” Ward mentioned of Randle El. “I also played quarterback, but I wanted to be on the receiving end.”And because of Cowher’s confidence in his players and in the special play, each got to live out his lifelong dream on the biggest stage.”I can’t describe what it’s like to see the elation of the crowd, knowing that that was a significant touchdown that … gave us a little leeway, and took the lead,” Ward mentioned. “That feeling in itself, man, that was something that I don’t think anyone can ever take away.”It was a special moment in my life.”
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