Holmes wants to be slap in Steelers' face

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. - Santonio Holmes sort of wants you to believe that there's nothing personal about Sunday's AFC championship game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. And he sort of doesn't.

Listen to the telling way he answered a question Wednesday about whether he had any extra motivation this week to beat his former team. Though he said that the grudge-match went down in December when the Jets defeated Pittsburgh, 22-17, in Pittsburgh, Holmes is clearly frustrated by the way the trade happened.

"I don't care about the Steelers right now," Holmes said. " . . . If we win the Super Bowl, then everything is personal. That's a slap back in the face of those guys' face for trading me. But right now, it's not even a focus of mine."

Holmes, a Super Bowl MVP in the prime of his career, had believed he was going to be spending the rest of his playing days with the Steelers. Holmes had built a house in Pittsburgh and was comfortable with the team and the city.

The team, however, apparently wasn't comfortable with the way Holmes had been conducting himself off the field. The Steelers already had their biggest star player, Ben Roethlisberger, under investigation for a sexual assault charge and facing discipline from the league. So when it was announced that Holmes was going to be suspended for violating the league's drug policy for a second time, the Steelers decided to send a message. They traded Holmes to the Jets for a fifth-round draft pick.

"I couldn't believe it," tight end Dustin Keller said of his reaction when he heard the news. "But we'll take it."

If ever there was a beads-for-Manhattan trade, this was it. Holmes made the most exciting game-ending catches in Super Bowl history for the Steelers two years ago, and Jets coach Rex Ryan was just giddy when he heard the team had a chance to land him.

"I just wanted him," Ryan recalls.

And Jets fans can see why. The team wouldn't have gotten this far without Holmes making clutch catches like the one he did against the Patriots last Sunday where he dove into the end zone and somehow ended up with the ball in his hands and his knee in bounds by inches. His Jets teammates say nothing that Holmes does on the field surprises them.

"We've seen him do this for so long in Pittsburgh that we kind of expected him to be doing it for us," Keller said.

Holmes said he learned a hard but important lesson about the business of sports when he was traded. And he learned something about himself.

"Don't give up on yourself because somebody else did," Holmes said. "That's exactly what I didn't do."

A motivated Holmes also could be the difference in the Jets getting past the AFC Championship game this time, and getting the team to the Super Bowl for the first time since 1969.

Said Ryan: "One of the reasons we brought Tone here is for these kind of games. Big-time players make big-time plays in the brightest spotlight. And here it is right here. The AFC Championship time. This is Tone time."