View topic - Ron Cook Big Ben Ballwashing article....but I agree :)

[Hi5Steeler Profile]

You can have Peyton, and Romo, too. With no Brady around, Big Ben is NFL's brightest star
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
By Ron Cook, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Peter Diana / Post-GazetteThe new No. 1 quarterback -- Ben Roethlisberger

quarterback Tom Brady will miss the rest of the season with a left leg injury. When New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady crashed to the Gillette Stadium turf, clutching his left knee, the impact was felt all the way to Pittsburgh. Instantly, the Steelers became a more serious threat to make the Super Bowl. Instantly, Ben Roethlisberger became the NFL's best quarterback.

What?

There's another quarterback you'd want more now that Brady is out for the season?

You can have Peyton Manning or Tony Romo.

I'll take No. 7.

I don't want anyone else trying to lead the Steelers through the AFC, which suddenly seems so much less formidable now that the powerful Patriots had a leg cut out from under them.

No one at Steelers headquarters yesterday was celebrating Brady's bad luck even if his injury significantly lessens the Patriots' Super Bowl hopes. NFL players are card-carrying union brothers. "You never want to see anyone get hurt like that," said veteran quarterback Charlie Batch, who has had his share of injuries, most recently a broken collarbone in the preseason that put him out for the season.

If anything had the Steelers in a mood to party one day after their 38-17 smack-down of the Houston Texans, it was seeing Roethlisberger breeze through the team's South Side complex without so much as a limp. He, just as easily as the great Brady, could be finished for the season. Within an hour after Brady went down after taking a hit from Kansas City Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard, Roethlisberger took a pop on his right knee from Texans defensive tackle Amobi Okoye on the next-to-last play of the first half.

At first, the hit looked bad. Roethlisberger tried to bury his face in the Heinz Field grass, clearly in pain. Who knows what offensive tackle Willie Colon was thinking when he rushed over to help him up? Colon and guard Kendall Simmons had tried to steer Okoye clear of Roethlisberger and were sickened when they saw him crash into the franchise. I know what I was thinking: The season could be over.

I'm guessing I wasn't alone.

Batch said Roethlisberger was pretty shook up at halftime, at least until the docs checked him out.

That made several hundred thousand of us, the 64,000-plus at the stadium and the countless Steelers fans watching on television.

Who really could relax until Roethlisberger jogged onto the field for the first series of the third quarter and promptly lead the Steelers on another touchdown drive?

"After seeing it on film, it could have been another Tom Brady thing," Simmons said after an afternoon team meeting. "Ben said he was all right today. I'm just thankful he was able to pull his leg back enough in time."

Roethlisberger isn't just very good.

He's very lucky.

"That's a quarterback's worst nightmare, someone rolling up your leg like that," Batch said. "That and when someone hits your arm as you're throwing. There are times you know you're going to have to take a hit and you can kind of prepare for it. But there's nothing you can do when someone gets your leg like that."

Even if Roethlisberger's knee did ache a bit yesterday, it's safe to say he felt better than he did after a lot of games the previous two seasons when he was sacked 93 times, more than any AFC quarterback. In addition to the Okoye hit, he was sacked twice by defensive end Mario Williams, once landing on his throwing shoulder, which is never a good thing for a quarterback. Other than those plays, though, his offensive line did a good job keeping him clean.

Just as he predicted it would.

"I'm excited for those guys so they can silence the critics who are talking bad about them," Roethlisberger said during training camp. "I have all the faith in the world that they'll protect me."

It's fun to think about how good Roethlisberger will be this season if he stays healthy. He was just about perfect against the Texans, completing 13 of 14 passes for 137 yards and two touchdowns, both to wide receiver Hines Ward. He also wisely picked his spots scrambling, running just twice, the first time for 17 yards on a third-and-4 play on the Steelers' first possession.

"He looks to me to be all the way back to where he was in our workouts after the Super Bowl year, before the [motorcycle] accident," Batch said. "He was on fire then. Every pass was right there. Every decision was the right decision. It's the same way now, and he's just going to keep getting better and better."

Think about that for a second.

Roethlisberger became the first quarterback in NFL history to go 13-0 in the regular season as a rookie in 2004.

He became the youngest quarterback to win a Super Bowl in '05.

He made the Pro Bowl and set Steelers records for touchdown passes (32) and passer-rating (104.1) last season.

And he's going to keep getting better?

Why not?

I ask you:

Why can't Roethlisberger take over for Brady as the NFL's brightest star?




Ron Cook can be reached at rcook@post-gazette.com More articles by this author
First published on September 9, 2008 at 12:00 am
EmailPrint

[Hi5Steeler Profile]

as soon as i saw that hit on big bens leg i thought he was hurt bad....... damn lucky and i hope they do something about qbs getting hammered in the lower extremities....

sunday brady went on IR due to it...vince young likely out four weeks due to it ....and big ben could have been put on IR also. All in one day. the franchise cant be put at such risk.

yea i know its a physical sport but ........

[Nick79 Profile]

Right now, I'd take Big Ben over ANY QB in the NFL. He's awesome RIGHT NOW and he has way more FUTURE and UPSIDE than Brady, Manning, Romo, Palmer, etc.

[Hoppy Profile]

PLus we have the best backup QB. M.L. is a Great addition and needs to play more.

[darthsteel Profile]

as soon as i saw that hit on big bens leg i thought he was hurt bad....... damn lucky and i hope they do something about qbs getting hammered in the lower extremities....

sunday brady went on IR due to it...vince young likely out four weeks due to it ....and big ben could have been put on IR also. All in one day. the franchise cant be put at such risk.

yea i know its a physical sport but ........

brady drops back 50 times a game and the law of averages was eventually gonna catch up with him over time whether it was drop back number 50 or 5000.
same goes for all the other guys that drop back that much, palmer, manning ,romo ect...
palmer got his in 2005..
does not mean they are all gonna getting mcl's , but chances are they will all get some pretty big injury that cost them alot of playing time.

The problem with ben is that he gets hit as much as those guys while dropping back half as many times do to the o line.
16 drop backs with 2 sacks and at least 1 knockdown on sunday was a bad ratio...

nothing else you could do besides making it flag football..

[Steeledge Profile]

Brett Favre needs to hold a clinic for these guys on the Brett Backpedal...

seriously...

Did you ever watch him when he throws the ball?
As soon as he releases it, he takes three to five really quick steps backwards.

Still the longest tenured active QB, and has yet to have a serious knee injury.

[Hi5Steeler Profile]

brady got hit during his release....backpedal not possible.