Former Steelers linebacker, Clark Haggans, a member of the team that won Super Bowl XL in 2005, died at 46, a popular Pittsburgh sports radio host announced Tuesday evening.
No cause of death has been given.
Haggans played 13 seasons in the NFL, including eight with the Steelers from 2000 to 2007.
He collected a career-high nine sacks during the 2005 season and sacked Seattle’s Matt Hasselbeck on the opening drive of Super Bowl XL, a 21-10 Steelers triumph.
Haggans later played for the Cardinals and 49ers, again making the Super Bowl as a member of the San Francisco team that won the NFC title in 2012.
He was a standout at Colorado State University, where he would later be inducted into the program’s Hall of Fame.
Haggans was drafted by the Steelers during the fifth round of the NFL Draft in 2000, one year after they drafted his college teammate Joey Porter.
“I was happy I was drafted – and to go and see Joey there with open arms. They should have played that Reunited song,” Haggans told Steelersnow.com in 2019.
The linebacker also recalled his first NFL game, a preseason battle against the Cowboys on July 30, 2000.
“I was star-struck seeing Troy Aikman. I used to use him on my Techno-Bowl team,” Haggans said. “Randall Cunningham was on their team then and when they snapped the ball, I didn’t move. It all happened so fast – I just stood there grabbing my crotch.”
There was a much larger playbook in the pros as well.
“Before the pros, my coach would tell me – that dude with the ball – go get him and don’t let him score. If we had more points than the other team I was happy,” Haggans said. “Now, I had to learn about unbalanced lines, jumbo packages, spread offenses and two-minute offenses. It was just crazy. It wasn’t just go get the guy with the ball anymore.”
The 2005 Steelers were the first team in NFL history to win the Super Bowl as a six-seed, a team carried largely in the postseason by its defense.
“A cool memory of course is winning the Super Bowl,” Haggans said in 2019. “The coolest though was that the first dude I saw when the confetti fell was Joey. We would wig out when we won the Holiday Bowl at Colorado State – that was the greatest thing to us then. Here we were winning a Super Bowl together.”
He finished with 46.5 sacks and 520 tackles, including 370 solo tackles, in his career.
Haggans is survived by two children, Damon and Alianna, according to WXPI.
