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WILKES-BARRE — Somewhere deep down, Ron Solt feels slightly slighted.
His nine-year NFL career included playoff appearances, a Pro Bowl berth and plenty of honor and respect.
But it never rewarded Solt with a feeling like the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots will experience today.
It never put him in a Super Bowl.
And that still has Solt a bit bothered nearly 25 years after his playing days, leaving him feeling like his career finished incomplete.
“It really did,” Solt said. “We had so many teams that had the opportunity.”
Not that Solt sits around stewing about it much these days.
The former Indianapolis Colts and Philadelphia Eagles standout guard spent the past few years serving as an assistant for Coughlin’s football team, and just watched his son, Ryan Solt, sign a Division I college scholarship to play football as an offensive lineman for FCS school Albany this past week.
But this time of year — Super Bowl week — often leaves Solt feeling a little let down, knowing four trips to the playoffs never produced a postseason victory, much less a Super Bowl berth.
“The teams in Philadelphia, they could play,” Solt said a bit wistfully. “The best team I might have been a part of was Philadelphia, with Reggie White, Jerome Brown, Randall Cunningham, Keith Byars, Keith Jackson.
“I would take that group any day.”
He believed he’d make the big game one day, but it never happened for him.
Solt, who starred as a high school player at Coughlin and on the offensive line at Maryland, was selected by the Colts in the first round of the 1984 NFL Draft. That year’s 18th overall selection became an NFL All-Pro in 1987, the year he was chosen to play in the Pro Bowl.
It was also the year Solt helped the Colts return to the AFC playoffs for the first time in decade, when they lost to the Cleveland Browns 38-21.
“We weren’t great,” Solt said of his four-year run with the Colts. “We made the playoffs one year, played Cleveland, they beat us pretty good.”
He figured it would change when he was traded to Philadelphia the following season.
But despite tons of talent and the promising bluster delivered by the late former Eagles coach Buddy Ryan, Solt’s Super Bowl dreams evaporated with three consecutive first-round losses by Philadelphia.
The first of those defeats came in 1988, when the NFC East champion Eagles got lost in the infamous Fog Bowl 20-12 in the divisional round against the Chicago Bears — when Solt was back home following two knee surgeries during that season.
Then Solt played in two NFC playoff games with the Eagles, Wild Card-round losses to the Los Angeles Rams in 1989 and the Washington Redskins in 1990. He never played in another postseason before retiring after playing a season back in Indianapolis in 1992.
“That year we lost to the Rams, that might have been our best year,” Solt said of Philadelphia’s 11-5 season in 1989. “They had a guy and spied Randall (Cunningham) and they beat us.”
Some guys wish they never played in a Super Bowl after getting beat in the big game.
To the day he died last year, Swoyersville native and former Baltimore Colts great Lou Michaels was tortured by his team’s upset loss to the Joe Namath and the upstart New York Jets in Super Bowl III.
“Yeah, it bothers me,” Michaels said in a 2010 Times Leader interview, “because of the fact it was the biggest game that ever existed. It’s something you try to accomplish your whole life. When you lose a Super Bowl, it stays with you.”
In the past, Solt’s former Coughlin teammate and offensive lineman Bruce Kozerski has called the memory of having his Cincinnati Bengals team victimized by Joe Montana’s last-minute comeback in San Francisco’s Super Bowl XXIII victory one of his most painful.
Solt would relish the chance to have been in either one of their spots.
“Every single player that ever played in the league has that goal,” Solt said. “To win as many games as they can win, and win the last game of the year. I could appreciate the teams that are playing in it (the Super Bowl) because I know what it takes to get there. You start training for something the year before, even two years before. I always went into the season with the mindset to play the best I could play. I could relate to the training that goes into it.”
But if all that training leaves a player just a little short of securing a Super Bowl trophy, Solt could fully understand how an empty feeling can linger a lifetime.
“It’s a good thing I never had that experience to go through,” Solt said. “The ultimate goal is to win it.”