It’s fair to say that when it came to incredible plays out of the secondary, there were very few in the game that could do it at the level that Troy Polamalu did.

Every player tries to do things their own way in the NFL, but when it comes to uniqueness among NFL players, there are very few who could rival what Troy Polamalu was able to do when he patrolled the secondary for 12 years.

The safety was taken in the 1st round of the 2003 NFL Draft with the 16th overall pick, and although it took him a year before he could really become an established force in the Steelers’ defensive backfield, not getting a single start behind veteran safety Mike Logan, it was certainly worth the wait for Steeler Nation as he went on to become one of the most dominant safeties of his era, terrorising many an offensive player that dared to stray across his path.

Nothing safe about this safety

He racked up more than 800 tackles during his 12-year stint in the league to go along with 32 interceptions in a career that saw him named first-team All-Pro four times, 8 Pro Bowl appearances and winning 2010 AP Defensive Player of the Year before being named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in their class of 2020. 

However, Polamalu was not someone that you could break down with stats and awards, he’s someone that you sometimes had to see to believe with arguably his most spectacular play coming during the 2008 season, the year that he won his second, and the Steelers’ sixth, Super Bowl. 

This catch was snow joke

Playing against the then- San Diego Chargers on a snowy day in Pittsburgh, a Phillip Rivers pass was tipped up into the air following a collision between Vincent Jackson and Ike Taylor and with the ball looking destined to fall incomplete, Polamalu appears in the nick of time to scoop the ball out of the air and intercept it when it was mere millimetres from hitting the ground.

What’s even more impressive is that he was in a position to run the ball back a few more yards afterwards:

Whilst The Immaculate Reception has gone down in Steelers folklore ever since the play in 1972, you could argue that given how far Polamalu had to fall to grab the ball in comparison to Franco Harris, it’s the far more impressive play between the two.

Taking the ball out of the air was certainly something that he had a nack for, as this highlight reel of his career demonstrates:

Will we ever see someone with that talent for the spectacular in the NFL again? It’s really hard to say given the high bar that Polamalu set for the rest.