From Hines Ward's Facebook page - an apology and explanation for his comments.

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"To my Steeler nation and my fb and twitter fans; I just finished an extensive conversation with Ben. We spoke about the interview in which I made the #1 mistake in doing a interview, I did it based off of emotions. It's interesting how people interpreted my interview. Some say I threw Ben under the bus, some say I was just making a general statement about about concussions.

I would never question a man's toughness playing in a STEELER unif. I didn't mean to cause such a stir. My frustration was based on the fact that this was a big game for us to stay in the playoff picture and having Ben out there gave us our best opp to win in Balt. I was frustrated because there was no indication of Ben not being able to play because he practiced a normal routine this week (wed, thurs and fri).

Some of the guys didn't find out he wasn't playing until saturday and getting that news on the day before the big game didn't go to well. Now as a veteran guy on the team you can see how upset that made a lot of us considering we were going down into the lions den in Baltimore without our fearless leader.

In the locker room some questions came about playing with a concussion, that is where my 50/50 comment came from based on players opinions. Some say they've played after having a concussion and some say you don't wanna mess with that. half of the guys on the team have had concussions at least once in their careers. But in football it's a tough decision on whether one should play or not play.

In the locker room some questions came about playing with a concussion, that is where my 50/50 comment came from based on players opinions. Some say they've played after having a concussion and some say you don't wanna mess with that. half of the guys on the team have had concussions at least once in their careers. But in football it's a tough decision on whether one should play or not play.

So the moral of this story is not to do an interview based off of emotions and I made that mistake and I have apologized to Ben for that. Ben and I are cool and always will be. We will not let this come between us, our talk was very productive.