The Return of Grande Benito
About a week before the 2007 NFL season kicked off, Sports Illustrated’s Peter King ranked every starting quarterback in the league from #1 - #32. Keep in mind, King is a respected journalist who has been at the magazine for like 45 years. Let me give you a little description on who King ranked 17th (in other words, in the bottom half) of all the starting QB’s league-wide:
QB #17 is 25-years-old. In three seasons, his record as a starter is 34-12. As a rookie, he won 13 straight regular season starts, a record that figures to last a very long time. He has appeared in six playoff games in his young career, winning five of them, and losing only to New England at the peak of their dynasty. Among active quarterbacks, only Favre, Manning, and Brady have won more playoff games. In his 2nd season, at age 23, he led his 6th-seeded team to three road victories in the playoffs before becoming the youngest Super Bowl-winning QB in NFL history.
So, let’s recap – before this season began, an intelligent, established journalist ranked Ben Roethlisberger as the 17th best starting quarterback in the league, behind such luminaries as Jay Culter (who had five career starts entering ’07), Jon Kitna (what???) and The Great Carson Palmer (zero playoff wins and counting).
Now I know that the sporting world has become a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately enterprise, with everyone wanting to rank everything all the time, but I just don’t see how Big Ben can still be so underrated. Amazingly, a radio station in Pittsburgh actually wondered if there could be a QB controversy when new coach Mike Tomlin was hired.
Yes, there were times last season when he was terrible – like his 4-INT game against Oakland, or his erratic performances in shutout losses to Jacksonville and Baltimore. And he didn’t exactly knock everyone’s socks off in Super Bowl XL. But as far as quarterbacks go, I think, ultimately, you ask for them to do three things for their team:
1. Be a leader.
2. Take care of the football.
3. Win games.
While #7 isn’t always so great with the second thing on that list, it is true that he rarely fumbles, and it looks like his 2006 season – when he led the league in INT’s – was an aberration, brought on by the effects of a concussion, an appendectomy, and a near-fatal motorcycle crash. (Not that I’m making excuses or anything, but I’m guessing those three things had something to do with it.)
So, is Roethlisberger a winner and a leader? When he stepped under center in September 2004, he took over a team that had finished 6-10 the year before and wasn’t expected to contend for anything other than maybe a Wild Card spot. All he did was lead the Steelers to the best record in AFC history and a #1 seed in the playoffs, where they would eventually lose the AFC Championship in a game that was closer than most people remember. Including the playoffs, Big Ben has won 38 games out of 51 starts in almost 3 ½ seasons. He put the ’05 Super Bowl team on his back with his lights-out performances in the first three playoff games, which were all on the road against higher-seeded teams. And just for good measure, he knocked the Bengals out of the playoffs on the final weekend of the 2006 season.
Furthermore, Big Ben is a presence behind the center. He’s a huge guy who commands the huddle. His teammates genuinely seem to like him and respect him. He hates losing and is the first one to take the blame after a tough day (his quote after the loss to Arizona three weeks ago: “This one’s on me; I need to play better.”). He’s the biggest celebrity in western PA, he’s dated a pro golfer and a Hollywood actress, and he has a sandwich named after him – the aptly title “Roethlis-burger.”
Most importantly, he’s given the Steelers organization confidence and stability at the quarterback position, something they haven’t had there since Terry Bradshaw. Pittsburgh will never be known as an easy place to play quarterback. Steelers fans still hold Neil O’Donnell responsible for losing the 1995 Super Bowl. During Kordell Stewart’s tumultuous career, he was doused with beer at home games, cried on the sidelines after being benched, and beset by constant rumors that he was gay. Jim Miller had such a short leash that he was benched in the first half of the first game after being named the starter for the 1996 season. After Tommy Maddox blew a game against Jacksonville two years ago, his kids were teased badly in school and some people reportedly threw garbage on his lawn. However, Roethlisberger has won over the city from the very beginning, and now he’s firmly entrenched as the franchise QB for the next decade. I can’t think of one other player – not even Brady or Manning – that the Steeler Nation would rather have taking the snaps.
Big Ben seems to have found his groove again in 2007. Maybe he’ll never put up great fantasy stats… maybe people will think he’s nothing more than a “game manager”… and maybe Peter King will always rank him below Carson Palmer. But the bottom line is that the Steelers haven’t had a truly great quarterback since Bradshaw retired in 1984. I think they have finally found one in No. 7.