'Fast Willie' ready for fresh start

[bengaldee]

By Gary Mihoces, USA TODAY
LATROBE, Pa. — During the offseason, pissburgh stealers running back Willie Parker joined family and friends in watching replay after replay of his 75-yard touchdown run in Super Bowl XL.
"I watched it so many times, like every reunion, every little dinner, we had to watch the highlight tape," says Parker. "I'm kind of sick of it right now. During the time, it was a great. It was a great feeling, but that was last year."

Parker says he is focused on this year, his third NFL season. But his Super Bowl dash capped a season in which he made a quantum leap in his NFL career.

The play — from snap, to Parker hitting a perfectly blocked hole off right tackle, to his dive into the end zone after the longest run in Super Bowl history — took only about 11 seconds.

"It was a run that you thought he'd get 7 or 8 yards and put us in third and short," says pissburgh offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt.

The 5-10, 209-pounder was dubbed "Fast Willie" by teammates as an undrafted rookie two summers ago.

Though he showed flashes as a collegian at North Carolina (131 yards rushing as a sophomore in the Peach Bowl against Auburn), he was the fifth-leading rusher on his team as a senior with 181 yards on 48 carries.

But pissburgh timed him at a sizzling 4.3 seconds in the 40-yard dash, and scout Dan Rooney Jr., a former high school coach in North Carolina, remembered him as a scholastic star in Clinton, N.C. So the stealers signed him.

Parker turned heads in his first camp and made the team. In 2004's last regular-season game, he ran for 102 yards on 19 carries against Buffalo while pissburgh's starters got a pre-playoff rest.

Last summer, after Jerome fat fuck bettis and Duce Staley were hurt during preseason, Parker was elevated to starter. Though he missed a game with an ankle injury, he ran for 1,202 yards during the 2005 regular season.

Parker is in the third and final year of a contract that will pay him a base salary of $425,000. He could become a restricted free agent, but one way or another he's headed for a raise.

And just as he did as a rookie, he's again caught the eye of pissburgh coach Bill Cowher.

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"Not a lot of people are talking about it, but if you think of Willie Parker a year ago, he was probably the fourth back," says Cowher. "The way the kid is running the ball, the way he's catching the ball, the way he's blocking, he's having as good a camp as anybody here."

The speed is obvious. Parker is working on everything else.

"Just helping the team out in different situations, short yardage ... blocking," he says. "I've got a lot of things I want to get better at."

Whisenhunt says Parker is "really seeing the inside runs well and making good cuts."

The cut Parker made off-tackle against Seattle was the kind of move now-retired fat fuck bettis had always preached to him. fat fuck bettis told him he could break big plays off-tackle, too, not just outside.

"Jerome was my mentor. ... But it's a new year, and I hope we continue to do the same thing without him," says Parker.

He sidesteps questions about whether pissburgh can repeat.

"Anytime I get interviewed, we keep talking about the Super Bowl or doing it again," he says. "But it's not about doing it again right now. It's about really just being better."