Posted on 01/19/2009 3:21:30 PM PST by malkee
PITTSBURGH - There always seems to be a yeah, but when discussing Ben Roethlisberger.
Yeah, he went 13-0 in his regular season starts as a 22-year-old rookie, but he was surrounded by great players. All he had to do was stay out of the way.
Yeah, he won a Super Bowl during his second year in the league, but he was horrific in that game (9 for 21 for 132 yards with a pick).
Yeah, hes 51-20 as a regular-season starter and 7-2 in the postseason, but he doesnt play pretty and disciplined. Half his big-play throws have a strong whiff of good fortune to them.
Know what? Its time to take the yeah, buts out of the conversation and call it the way it is.
Thanks to the Steelers' 23-14 win over the Ravens in the AFC Championship, 26-year-old Ben Roethlisberger is headed to his second Super Bowl. He is one of the league's three best quarterbacks right now and the arc of his career is putting him on pace to be a legend.
Roethlisberger and that Steelers defense are the reasons Pittsburgh is headed to Tampa Bay to play the Arizona Cardinals. The numbers dont testify, (16 for 33 for 255 yards and a touchdown), but people do.
His record speaks for itself, said Steelers tight end Heath Miller. I dont care how he gets the job done. I dont care if he scrambles around and its not pretty. I just care that he wins.
Said Ravens defensive lineman Trevor Pryce, I have one piece of advice for the Arizona Cardinals. Dont pass rush. Dont let him play recess football because if you let him play recess football, hes the best in the business
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcsports.msnbc.com ...
Tom will be watching TV at home with Giselle and THREE Superbowl rings. Life’s tough.
No, he is a sack of rocks in the back field. All Arizona needs to do is exploit the Steeler line, and he will be more beat up than ever.
And that's his new realm. I bet he's watched some interesting video on that TV set too!
One problem might be that in the one Super Bowl he won he had a pretty bad game. While Brady had pretty good games in his 3 SB wins. I don’t get to see all of the Steeler games so I can’t really judge correctly.
This article pretty accurately describes his play.
I'm a Viking fan (well, as much of a fan one can be, following a team saddled with 45 yrs of futility), so I'm rooting for the Steelers, coached by one of many former Vikings assistants that the ownership passed over, and who eventually took their teams to the Super Bowl (Billick, Dungy, now Tomlin).
And Tomlin did it all whilst moonlighting as "Foreman" on "House."
bttt
Actually, if Tom E. Curran of NBC Sports would care to check the record more carefully Big Ben was 14-0 as a rookie during the regular season, and if Curran would make more than a superficial effort he might observe that in the previous 14 games the Steeler team record was 5-9 even with those "great players". It wasn't a matter of staying out of the way, rather Big Ben proved to be a major force right out of the box. He was just what the Rooney franchise needed. As a result the Steelers now hoist more Lombardis than any other NFL franchise.
Check the record. the Steelers don't lose games when they have a lead of 11 points or more. They were 142-1-1 in regular season, and 10-0 in playoffs going into SB XLIII. Uncharacteristically having blown a 13 point lead, the Steelers found themselves 1st and 20 to go at their own 12 with only 2:24 remaining in regulation. No panic. Big Ben cooly led a "drive for the ages" (to paraphrase NFL commissioner Roger Goodell) culminated with an absolutely perfect thread-the-needle pass to Santonio Holmes against triple coverage in the corner of the endzone for the championship winning TD with 35 seconds remaining. No QB could have done it better, absolutely none.
The Brothers Manning don't even rate a mention. Update: Make that 59-22 total and 8-2 postseason now with 2-0 in the Super Bowl.
I’m glad somebody else posted to this thread after the Superbowl. He really deserved MVP but once again was short-shrifted. I’ll never forget the realization I had in the fall of 2004 that we had a really, really good quarterback for the first time in 25 years. Unbelievable. He was great. God was good. Pittsburgh is lucky.
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