SteelerWatch

Now be honest. You just looked at that headline and your jaw hit the floor. “Our franchise quarterback, only the ninth-best player on the team?!” I mean no disrespect, folks. It’s just a simple fact that Roethlisberger is a great game manager, but until he proves otherwise, he’s just not one of those “top-five” quarterbacks in the league. He’s not Peyton Manning, he’s not (this hurts to say) Tom Brady. Yes, he posted a phenomenal record in his first two years, but he slipped a lot last year. Part of that was due to the injuries from the motorcycle crash. But there are too many unknowns to rank him any higher.

To tell the truth, it was hard to rank him all the way down here. He’s been a savior to the city of Pittsurgh. The problem is that we don’t yet know how well he’ll bounce back from last season. A lot of quarterbacks have faltered after a bad season, never to recover. Kurt Warner is a great example. The kid is only going in to his fourth season, though, and his first two were so good that I have no reason to believe that he won’t bounce back even higher.  He’s shown an amazing ability to grow and improve, to learn from past experiences.  He lost an AFC championship game his rookie year, took away some lessons, and returned one post-season later to (literally) become the only thing that could keep the Colts from walking away victorious.  Then he led the team to a Super Bowl victory (I wouldn’t dare say he won the game for us, though).

He has a lot playing against him this year that could keep him down.  He has a new head coach to please.  He’ll be running a revamped offense, and now it’s up to him to call blocking assignments at the line.  And then there’s the questions that have to be lingering in the darkest corners of his subconscious: “Can I recover from the physical and mental pain of 2006?”  He has a lot of detractors in the media saying he can’t, or he won’t, return to his pre-injury form.

But he has plenty in his favor, too.  He’ll likely be doing it behind a line that looks considerably different from the 2006 squad, a group that one can hardly believe could play much worse than they did last season.  It’s guaranteed that at least one new face will be in the starting lineup this year with the addition of Sean Mahan.  The big question at this point is where he lines up, because it will ultimately determine how many new faces we see.  If he takes over at center, it leaves open the possibility that everyone else on the line will be the same.  If he takes over for either Max Starks or, more likely, Kendall Simmons, we’ll probably see Chukky Okobi at center.  We could even see Willie Colon and Chris Kemoeatu, leaving only the left side of the line intact from 2006.  Regardless, though, the group should improve, and that can only mean good things for Ben.

He’ll also be operating out of the no-huddle more often, something he did flawlessly in college and has looked to be completely at home with when the team has run it in the past.  He’ll have a broader range of formations to execute from, and a wider array of targets to throw to.  And that new head coach?  It can only mean good things.  He’ll simply have more opportunity to be Ben the Field General, a role we’ve seem him excel in.

But only time will tell if he climbs this list next year.  There’s just too much we don’t yet know.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 11:27 am and is filed under My Opinion, Team Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.