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CLICK HERE to Register for a free account and login for a smoother ad-free experience. It's easy, and only takes a few moments.I think it is a matter of how one defines elite vs. very good or even great. If you draw that distinction Big Ben is somewhere between very good and great right now. If consistently being one of the top 5-7 QBs year in year out is your measure of elite then sure he's elite now.Roethlisberger is an elite QB. How could anyone argue otherwise?
A lot of NFL fans (and almost all Steeler fans) like to use the record in Super Bowls stat as some sort of be-all end-all stat. I think it's kind of ridiculous.
Reason for that is by that logic losing in a conference championship (or earlier - or losing regular season games to miss the playoffs entirely) does not count against a player or team at all - yet winning those same exact games (but losing in the final game) is something horribly bad.
Sorry, but that makes no sense - though both fans and the media will continue to recite won-loss records in the Super Bowl for eternity as if it was some deeply meaningful stat.
Back to the original topic: yes, Roethlisburger is currently one of the NFL's best quarterbacks even if his style is markedly different from that of Brady, Manning, Brees and Rivers.
I think it is a matter of how one defines elite vs. very good or even great. If you draw that distinction Big Ben is somewhere between very good and great right now. If consistently being one of the top 5-7 QBs year in year out is your measure of elite then sure he's elite now.
A lot of NFL fans (and almost all Steeler fans) like to use the record in Super Bowls stat as some sort of be-all end-all stat. I think it's kind of ridiculous.
Reason for that is by that logic losing in a conference championship (or earlier - or losing regular season games to miss the playoffs entirely) does not count against a player or team at all - yet winning those same exact games (but losing in the final game) is something horribly bad.
Sorry, but that makes no sense - though both fans and the media will continue to recite won-loss records in the Super Bowl for eternity as if it was some deeply meaningful stat.
Back to the original topic: yes, Roethlisburger is currently one of the NFL's best quarterbacks even if his style is markedly different from that of Brady, Manning, Brees and Rivers.
It’s up to the Green Bay Packers now, our Packers, America’s team. They are the last best hope for good and decent football fans everywhere. Aaron Rodgers, Clay Matthews and the rest of the Pack are all that stand between Ben Roethlisberger and his nauseating return to polite society.
It seems to be a familiar question when Roethlisberger is in the room, but we must ask again: Could someone please stop this man?
Roethlisberger was thoroughly outplayed by Mark Sanchez, who nearly lifted the Jets out of a 24-0 hole. Big Ben completed just 10 passes, threw two picks and covered up a botched snap in the end zone for a safety. Roethlisberger’s numbers look like something Sanchez would wipe on a teammate’s coat. His passer rating was 35.5, which was naturally downplayed by many critics and columnists who, when watching the Steelers, seem to think the most important thing a quarterback can do is extend plays.
And here I was, under the assumption that they were supposed to, you know, make plays.
Here was how one scribe from SI.com described Roethlisberger’s performance: “This effort illustrated the entire palate of greatness Roethlisberger possesses . . . He improvised, extended plays and showed the will of a champion. Early Roethlisberger managed a run-oriented attack. Later, he picked apart maybe the best secondary in football.”
He did what? Now I admit I may have been distracted by the bartender in the Miller Lite man-thong commercial, but I saw most of this game. And just to be sure, I went back and checked: Roethlisberger completed three passes for 37 yards in the second half. He threw a pick and got sacked twice after halftime. He did enough to win, as he often does, but he picked apart nobody. He did not illustrate a palate of greatness, whatever that is. And he certainly didn’t deserve an “A,” which is the grade John P. Lopez awarded him on SI.com.
Not an “A-minus,” an “A” — for the guy with the 35.5 rating.
This is, of course, is only the beginning. The two-week deification of Roethlisberger begins. It’s been less than a year since he plied a group of college girls with alcohol and allegedly had his way with one of them in the bathroom while his stooge cop friend stood guard. Now Roethlisberger kneels and prays on the field after games. Now there is hardly a reminder of the behavior that got him bounced from the league for six games (later reduced to four).
I'm guessing every Steeler forum out there has its own thread devoted to this article. I just wish somebody other than Gerry Callahan would have been the voice of Pats fans.
Ben Roethlisberger's a zero, not a hero - BostonHerald.com
The only reason Big Ben wasn't convicted in the case in Georgia was because of Police Misconduct.. The cops there screwed everything up so badly that there was no hope of getting the truth out.
And it's not the first time that this has come up. It came up in the lawsuit in Nevada. As well as times while he was in school in Ohio. It's just been swept under the rug..
Ben is elite, top 5 or 6 QB in the world.
Has a different way of getting it done, has a great arm, very strong and big, tough as nails.
I hate the dirt bag.
Do you hate him because his team beat your team or do you hate him because he was accused of rape? I figure the latter is not a big deal to you if you are a Mark Sanchez supporter.
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Ha Ha.
I hate him because of his over all demeanor, his goofy looks and voice, how he comes off dumb as a rock and selfish, and the rape thing.
- The rape thing, the same reasons I hate Cutler.
I do respect his play on the field.
The bottom line is that if Roethlisberger wins his third SB as starting QB, he joins Aikman, Bradshaw, Brady and Montana as the only guys in 46 years of SB history who've done so. That makes him "Elite," whether we like it or not. Hopefully, people will regard him as "Elite with an asterisk."
Finally I heard a talking head who didn't kiss Roethlisberger's arse for his mediocre performance in the AFC title game. The apparent party line was that Roethlisberger was masterful by extending plays which made his pittiful completion percentage and interception ratio. Some I even heard some talking heads commend Roethlisberger for the INTs because they were deep in Jets' territory pinning them deep.
Boomer Easiason was on WEEI this morning and he said watching the game film Roethlisberger was awful. He should have been picked four times.
Then Boomer missed the point. Ben missed some throws, to be sure, but he also made plays when he had to. With his feet. With his arm. By improvising.
I like Boomer a lot. But he's just way off here. Those two first downs at the end of the game were GREAT plays by Ben, even if one of the passes was behind the receiver a bit.
Those rushing numbers pick up kneel downs and times when he was sacked or nearly sacked.And he missed a lot of plays with his arm. He was inconsistent at best. He made costly mistakes. He made some great plays and he made some god awful plays. Without the running game and defense in the first half, the Steelers would have been crushed. The guy completed 10 passes on 19 throws and he rushed for 21 yards on 11 attempts. He threw two bonehead picks (granted they were strategically great interceptions which proves how great he played by picking those times to be picked).
Did Roethlisberger play awful? No. Did he have a great day? No. He had an uneven day that all the media turned into a masterful performance. He was great at times and awful at others.