PITTSBURGH -- The locker room had largely cleared out.
There were no more games left for Steelers to play. Not for the next eight months, for everyone who had lingered or left. Not forever, for some.
William Gay seemed acutely aware of this all afternoon and that evening.
The specifics of his career remained blurry - irrelevant, really - in the hour following Pittsburgh's 45-42 playoff loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. The future did, too.
Yet after his 175th competitive game in a Steelers uniform, the man who often appeared more interested in a cup of oatmeal in a teammate's locker than any amount of reflecting aloud, leaked some perspective.
It would be unfair to say he knew he was finished as a Steeler, but he suspected. Gay announced on Instagram Monday that the Steelers will release him.
In the first half of what was shaping up to be both an upset loss and a blowout, Gay came over to the defensive linemen on the bench and tried to put the team's 14-point deficit in context.
"'Live in the moment. We got a lot of football left,'" Gay said he told Pittsburgh's defensive front. "You know, the cliches. But in those adverse times you have to believe in them. And that's basically -- that's basically what I was just telling them."
Gay's role was reduced from starting in 2015 to playing the slot in 2016 to being replaced there by Mike Hilton, a December 2016 practice squad signing who the New England Patriots didn't have room for on their reserves, in 2017. He manned the dimebacker (sixth defensive back) position, which got him on the field for 27.2 percent of the team's defensive snaps.
He just completed his 11th season in the NFL and his 10th with the Steelers. At the end of the 2015 season, when he was set to become a free agent, he joked that he wouldn't want to play anywhere else, in part, because he remembered how poorly his one year with the Arizona Cardinals went.
More somberly in January of 2017, the veteran knew how fleeting of a chance he and his teammates had just let slip.
"It's small. They don't come a lot. Out of my 11 years I think I've been in the playoffs, what, I want to say, I think eight. Eight or nine, something like that," Gay said. "But I've only been to the Super Bowl twice and only won it once. So it don't come often.
Here, Gay's already scratchy voice started to waver. He caught himself and reverted.
"You got to cherish those moments and like I said, they did a great job, and they're moving on."
In Gay's goodbye message to Pittsburgh fans, posted Monday afternoon, he made clear he did not want to be done playing in the NFL. Just that he was with the Steelers. He will be coming back, if he can, to try and lift another Lombardi Trophy.
He got his only one in his second year in the league, 2008. Gay made on tackle in the game. He made one less in his last with Pittsburgh.
Gay was aware of how tired a team's outlook on every season could be, aiming for a Super Bowl and nothing less, even if it was true. However much of a balance the 2017 Steelers seemed to strike at times - between youth and experience, rush and coverage or even offense, defense and special teams - there was nothing that felt wildly different about the group he was about 45 seconds away from leaving.
"That's our goal each and every year. I get what you're saying, everybody says that at the beginning of the year, but can you really do it? But we believe in that. We only have one goal and we fell short of that.
"No matter -- we don't want no consolation prizes where 'Oh, we won the AFC North,'" Gay said, speaking as though he was running out of breath. "We don't care about that around here. It's about Super Bowls."
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