The reality of it is, if I'm not in the plans, with one year left on my deal, the only fair thing to do is give me the opportunity to back out and shop at the mall.

[Sure enough, after he threw a costly end-zone interception in Week 4 against the Browns, Stewart lost his job to Tommy Maddox, whose play in leading the Steelers to a comeback win in that game sealed Stewart's fate with the franchise. Even when Stewart replaced an injured Maddox seven weeks later and led Pittsburgh to two wins, he knew he was auditioning for some other team.] I was ready to go, ... I know I have lots to prove. I wanted to go where they'd have my back.

You liked that, didn't you?

I never once got to the point where I said it's time to move on and go somewhere else and thought it was going to be better, ... Because trust me, if you have problems here and you take that baggage with you, it will be the same thing over and over again. So I had to get myself together before I really tried to do anything.

I'm having fun, plain and simple, ... I'm having fun and everybody's taking care of their business. I haven't felt like this in like three years, since 1997.

Now that I'm back at this point, if I wasn't a level-headed individual, I'd be exploding and blasting people, saying, 'I told you so.' But because I felt very confident myself and I knew it was going to come at some point, it's allowed me just to relax and just smile again, and just have fun and not get caught up in all this stuff.