Troy Polamalu is in the pantheon of safeties across NFL history, though the Pittsburgh Steelers legend nearly called it quits before properly displaying his talents to the football world.

Former Steelers Ryan Clark and Jerome Bettis conversed about him during the latest episode of The Pivot Podcast, with the former revealing that Polamalu was ready to hang up his spikes back in 2004 if his sophomore season went as poorly as his rookie campaign.

“He said that he decided in the offseason going into his second year that if he was as bad as he was the first year, he was gonna retire,” Clark said.

Clark was playing for Washington at that point in time and didn’t join the Steelers until 2006, meaning he wasn’t privy to Polamalu’s mindset in the moment, but it’s a fascinating detail nonetheless that casts his career in a different light.

The No. 16 overall pick out of USC in the 2003 draft, Polamalu appeared in all 16 of Pittsburgh’s games as a newcomer, though he was never included amongst the starting lineup. He finished the year with 48 total tackles, two sacks and a forced fumble.

Not satisfied with what he put on tape, Polamalu returned with might and main the following season. He posted 97 tackles and five interceptions, both of which led the Steelers, while earning his first Pro Bowl and Second-Team All-Pro nods.

That showing was enough to entice Polamalu to remain on the gridiron, and it was only up from there. He concluded his 13-year stint in the league, the entirety of which was spent in the black and gold, after the 2014 campaign with 783 combined tackles, 107 passes defended, 32 interceptions and 14 forced fumbles.

An eight-time Pro Bowler, six-time All-Pro, two-time Super Bowl champion and the 2010 Defensive Player of the Year, Polamalu was later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a member of the 2020 class in his first year of eligibility.

When looking back on the hardships Polamalu endured early on with the Steelers, Bettis believes that was more so a matter of the team not necessarily understanding how to deploy him rather than a reflection of the type of player he was.

“It wasn’t so much that he was bad, it’s just that they didn’t really have an idea of how to really utilize him,” Bettis said. “When coach [Dick] LeBeau kind of let him go, that’s when it all kind of went bananas.”

It’s hard to imagine a world in which Polamalu didn’t blossom into a star in Pittsburgh, so the fact that he put retirement on the table after an imperfect rookie season is a ludicrous idea in retrospect.