It was a reference to the way Santonio Holmes, the team’s star receiver, could step up at just the right moment, no matter how bumpy or out of sync things had been for him or the team before this.
Holmes showed that ability to rise when others shrink – especially late in a game – when he was an All-Big Ten receiver at Ohio State and then several times in his 9-year NFL career.
He did it on back-to-back November weekends in 2010 for the Jets when he caught game-winning touchdown passes against the Cleveland Browns and Houston.
He did it early in his career with Pittsburgh, helping the Steelers beat the Cincinnati Bengals with a 67-yard TD catch of a Ben Roethlisberger pass in 2006 and then the following year with another game-winning reception versus the Browns.
He did it on the biggest stage of all – at Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa in 2009 – when his acrobatic catch with 35 seconds left lifted the Steelers to the NFL crown over the stunned Arizona Cardinals.
That catch – which helped make him the MVP of the game – became the highlight reel touchstone of Tone Time.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Now, all these years later, the clock is different for Holmes.
His playing days in the NFL are a dozen years behind him. He’s 41 now and beginning his first-ever coaching job, mentoring the wide receiver corps at Central State.
And yet, Wednesday – at the Marauders’ first official preseason practice in McPherson Stadium – he showed time still ticks to his beat when it’s needed.
After three decades of struggle following three national titles in the early 1990s, Central State is trying to reset the clock – or maybe it’s the calendar – when it comes to Marauder football.
In March the school hired new head coach Tony Carter, a dynamic presence with his own NFL past.
After a stellar college career at Florida State – he started all four years in the Seminoles secondary – he played seven years in the NFL with five different teams.
In the 4½ months since he was hired, Carter has been busy trying to reshape a Marauders program that has won just 48 of 187 games since football was reinstated at the school in 2005 after being disbanded for eight years.
He’s brought in 55 new players – 22 of them freshman and the rest transfers – after looking at “thousands,” of prospects from the portal.
Carter also has put together a mostly new coaching staff that includes four assistants with NFL playing experience:
- Quintin Demps, who played with five teams over 10 years in the league, coaches safeties.
- Leon Washington – who was known as one of the NFL’s top return specialists, making two Pro Bowls and twice receiving All-Pro honors – is the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks’ coach.
- Brandon McKinney – who starred at Chaminade-Julienne and Michigan State before playing with San Diego, Baltimore and Indianapolis – has returned to CSU, where he has coached since 2018, as the defensive line coach.
- The best known of the bunch though is Holmes, who was a first-round draft choice of the Steelers in 2006 and four years later was one of the highest paid receivers in the league when he signed a five-year, $45 million contract with the Jets and was named team captain by Ryan.
He last played with the Chicago Bears in 2014 and then Pittsburgh brought him back in 2017 for a retirement ceremony on the field.
Wednesday, although he was all decked out in CSU garb – from his black ballcap, to his long-sleeve gray jersey and his sweats that bore a Marauder logo – he admitted that four months ago he didn’t know anything about the school even though he’d played his college ball just an hour away:
“I’m from Florida and I came to play at THE Ohio State University. It was the only place I cared about,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about Central State, I didn’t even know where it was.”
That all changed when Carter – whom he played against in the NFL, trained with in Florida and still plays golf with – sent him a text asking if he’d be interested in joining his staff at the NCAA Division II HBCU.
Early this year, Holmes had applied for the coaching job at his fabled high school – Glades Central in Belle Glade, Florida – but didn’t get the job.
After he had retired he eventually set his sights on coaching and said he sought advice from Jim Tressel, his head coach at Ohio State. That helped him focus on the path he needed to take and he was intrigued by Carter’s offer and soon accepted.
Wednesday he showed he certainly knows where he’s at now.
At times he provided animated instruction during receiver drills. But it was afterward when he especially rose to the moment at hand.
Some 45 minutes after practice ended, the McPherson turf was deserted except for one continuing confab at the far end of the field.
Holmes first spent nearly 15 minutes huddling with Quinten Johnson, one of the Marauders’ new receivers who had just transferred from Illinois State. He had been redshirted last season after a prep career at Chaminade Julienne and then Trotwood Madison High.
When Johnson finally left, Holmes then held court with a pair of receivers, Charles Smith, a Canton product who was at CSU last year after a season at the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics institution St. Andrews University in North Carolina and Marquise Morris, a sophomore from the Detroit area.
Soon they were joined by 6-foot-6 quarterback Tison Hill, who started the final games for CSU last season after transferring from Texas Southern.
Asked about it later, Holmes remembered very early in his career, back at Glades Central, how his coaches – Ray McDonald and Mickey Freeman – took time to talk with him about football, being a teammate and life in general.
In private the CSU players said they knew a little about Holmes, though, like their coach had done with CSU, they had managed some quick research.
“They told me about him when I got here,” Johnson said. “He was with the Steelers, right? And won the Super Bowl?” Smith had the same Cliff Notes version of Holmes’ career: “I read a little about him. I know he was really good and now he’s sharing some of that information. He’s teaching us step by step, breaking it down.
“He tells us when we’re doing something right and when we’re wrong and how to fix it.
“He’s helping us get better and that’s what we need right now.”
Muck City
Belle Glade – which is on the southeast side of massive Lake Okeechobee – is the second largest body of fresh water in the continental U.S. behind Lake Michigan. South of town the Everglades extend for 1.5 million acres.
Called “Muck City” because of the area’s rich soil, Belle Glade grows two main crops: sugar cane and NFL players.
The city of just 33,000 people has produced an abundance of NFL players – more than three dozen – including Andre Waters, Fred Taylor, Louis Oliver, Jessie Hester, Reidel Anthony, Barkevious Mingo and Kelvin and Travis Benjamin.
As the story goes – one that has gotten colorful retelling over the years by Sports Illustrated and ESPN – Belle Glade athletes have developed that special speed and dexterity so many are known for because they chase and catch rabbits.
When the farmers burn off the sugar cane fields each year, the rabbits are sent running for cover and the Belle Glade kids run them down and either sell them to locals for food or bring them home so their families can eat themselves.
That tale has been part of Holmes’ lore since he helped lead Glades Central to two state football championships and he won a pair of state track titles, as well.
The other day, when we spoke in the coach’s office, I’d wondered aloud if much of it was a myth. He shook his head and though he smiled, he was serious.
I’d told him I’d lived in Miami, two hours south of Belle Glade, so he thought I should know better:
“You know what that was about. That rabbit story was part of a way of eating for us. We needed food.
“My grandpa sold rabbits and fish. We made money going out and hunting them and going fishing. We’d bring what we got to him.”
I told him how I once did a story up around Lake Okeechobee when a drought had dropped the lake’s water level almost 10 feet. I’d stopped at fish houses in several of the little towns around the lake – places like South Bay, Clewiston, Moore Haven, Pahokee and his hometown – and at one place a guy took me into the big coolers and showed me how, with no fish to sell, he had raccoons and possums and rabbits stacked up like cord wood.
He had a steady stream of customers – some who drove up from Miami – and filled their own portable coolers with them so they’d have many dinners to come.
Holmes laughed and nodded:
“One tough thing with my grandpa was growing up eatin’ all that wildlife.”
‘Life is about change’
“The journey has been real,” he said as he thought back over his past.
Just as there were “tough” times growing up, there also have been bumps in the road when he got to the pros. There were times he ran afoul with the league or the law, and that drew a suspension here, a bad headline there.
But through it all he remained an ardent student of the game and, mixed with his God-given, continually-honed talent he often was able to bounce back in wondrous fashion.
The 2008 Steelers’ season was a perfect example.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
After being Pittsburgh’s leading receiver the year before, he was benched two times in the 2008 campaign.
Regardless of what was happening to him, his mom – as she had before all his college and pro games – would send him the same text message:
“Big time players step up in big time games!”
And that’s just what happened in Super Bowl XLIII.
With the Steelers trailing late, he made four catches for 73 yards on the final drive and capped it off with one of the most clutch catches in Super Bowl history.
Surrounded by three Arizona defenders in the deep corner of the end zone, he stretched out for a fingertips catch of a Roethlisberger pass and managed to tap his feet inbounds at the last second.
He was mobbed by his teammates as the incredulous Cardinals slumped in disbelief.
Just as the MVP honors of that championship game erased the early-season disappointments, Holmes is now trying to impart a similar reversal of negative thinking to his new CSU players.
The years of losing – just like the championship seasons long ago – are something few of these current players know anything about.
And a lot of them were only a year or two old when he made that Super Bowl catch.
He said what matters this season is the here and now, not getting hung up on the past.
“Life is about change,” Holmes said. “If you’re not willing to be part of it, you’ll be left behind.
“But if you accept it, you’ll be able to roll over all that other stuff.”
He said in doing so, you’ll become the type of player and team you aspire to be. He said the focus should be on what’s ahead, not behind.
Even so, thanks to social media and YouTube videos, today’s players can do a quick study and know something about him.
But that’s a form of artificial intelligence.
The real learning comes on the field, where the players see and experience his feel for them – and his heart – not just his resume.
That’s what was going on long after practice ended Wednesday.
The Marauders players were learning Tone Time as it ticks today.
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