Rather, I wanted to find out if Ben is clearly the worst, and if he appears to be spiraling toward the end. Ultimately, this wasn’t an attempt to claim that one of these guys was BETTER than another. I also isolated Ben’s 2020 season - the one that has given all these writers their juice this summer - to see if it shows a man hitting his end. If Ben is the one that’s in decline, this stretch should make it easy to see. Seven years is a good sample size, and begins at a time when all three men were vets in their 30s, when all three had already won titles, and when all three had missed plenty of time with injuries. So I lined up the three of them over the last seven seasons (since 2014), using all the typical passing stats. I mean, seriously - hahahahahahaha! Photo by Shelley Lipton/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images METHODOLOGYīrady and Rodgers are generally regarded as the two prototype passers of this era, and they’re conveniently in the same age-bracket as Roethlisberger. So I went looking for numbers to bear this out. Yet, it’s the biggest certainty I can seem to find about Ben: the guy isn’t a star anymore. And though Rodgers is only two years younger than Roethlisberger, and missed half a season just a couple years ago, I never hear chatter about his health declining. The talking heads can’t stop to wipe the drool off their faces when discussing Brady’s fitness (though the eyeball test seems to suggest that TB12 doesn’t have a lot of zing left in his fastball). Instead, I find myself a little fixated on the comparison to Brady and Rodgers.
#Ben roethlisberger stats tonight pro#
There are all sorts of responses I have to this, such as, “ the guy played with half-an-offensive coordinator last year and no running game to speak of, one year off elbow surgery that nearly cost his career, with a receiving corps that led the league in dropped passes, and he still put up Pro Bowl type numbers and won 12 games (including 11 in a row).” But answers like this are too easy to issue. So now, we’re left with, “he used to be good, but it’s over.” For a while, people could backhand compliment him by claiming he was a great back-yard baller, but not a much of a surgeon - except that he has more perfect games than anyone in history too. For a while, they would say that the Steelers were mostly a running team - except that Ben has more 500 yard passing games than anyone in history, and has led the NFL in attempts, completions, and yards multiple times. The argument used to be that the Steelers only won because of their defense - until the all-star defenders retired, and Ben kept winning. In some ways this is just the latest attempt to withhold credit from Roethlisberger.
Sometimes it’s even Ike Taylor (of all people) telling TMZ (of all places), “I think should shut it down.” No, really.
(With insights like that, one wonders why he’s a former GM and not running someone’s club right now.) Sometimes it’s Mike Tannenbaum, former GM and now ESPN yapping head, saying he expects Ben to get benched this season for poor play.
Sometimes it’s myriad NFL writers ranking him fourth among AFC North quarterbacks, behind Lamar Jackson, Baker Mayfield, and Joe Burrow (a prediction they’ll keep making over and over until it’s true, I suppose). Sometimes it’s disguised as wisdom, like when Fansided runs stories with headlines like “3 reasons Ben Roethlisberger can’t be on the Steelers in 2021,” or featuring subheads like, “Roethlisberger’s overall regression will hurt the Steelers.” Sometimes it’s couched in a compliment, such as CBS Sports’ Cody Benjamin writing the other week that Ben, Aaron Rodgers, and Tom Brady are all dead solid locks for the Hall of Fame, but starting Big Ben’s write up with, “Roethlisberger hasn’t necessarily aged as gracefully as Brady and Rodgers.” And after last season, he’s obviously finished.” It goes like this: “Big Ben has had a great career, but he’s, you know, big, so he must be out of shape. It’s not exactly a joke, more like a smirk the collective football world seems to be having for much of the offseason when they talk about Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
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