When Aaron Rodgers crushed Ryan Clark's Super Bowl MVP dream

Ryan Clark is considered one of the most highly underappreciated players in NFL history. The free safety spent his most fruitful years with the Pittsburgh Steelers, winning a Super Bowl and making a Pro Bowl as a complement to future Hall of Famer Troy Polamalu.

However, there's one particular game that he would rather forget: Super Bowl XLV. Before that game, Clark had envisioned himself to emerge victorious, telling "Mike and Mike" in 2017:

"For two weeks I planned how I was going to be Super Bowl MVP. I had figured it out. Every time they put [wide receiver] Greg Jennings in the slot ... they ran the same play. It never changed.

"I say, 'Here it is guys, I'm about to pick this ball off and I am going 100 yards!' I had figured it out. Sure enough, the play starts, I take off running, and it's the play I thought."

Instead, Aaron Rodgers found his slot man, who beat Clark to the ball for the touchdown:

"The doggone Aaron Rodgers is so stinking good, he throws it right over my head."

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Ryan Clark later wished Steelers hadn't made it to Super Bowl XLV

Almost 14 years after it happened, Super Bowl XLV still haunts Ryan Clark, to the point that he wishes he shouldn't have been there to begin with.

Last February, he said on Inside the NFL that he would rather be in his house, watching someone else like Rex Ryan and the New York Jets (whom the Steelers had beaten in the AFC Championship Game) oppose the Packers:

"I remember everything abou the confetti, because it's falling on my head as (head coach) Mike Tomlin puts his arm around me and we're walking off the field. I don't care what anybody says. Going to the Super Bowl and not winning it is, to me, worse than never going."

He continued:

"It's that miserable of an experience. ... It was almost like mourning a death. So for me, I would rather just not even get to that point and just be like the other 30 schlubs."

Following that game, Clark wouldn't make the playoffs again before retiring in 2015 after a year in Washington.