Ben Roethlisberger: Hall of Famer in the Shadows

"During his first five seasons (2004-08), I thought Roethlisberger was clearly the best quarterback in the NFL behind Manning and Brady."

Big Ben rarely threw the ball the first couple of seasons (under 300 attempts both years), even though he had a high DVOA I'm not sure anyone thought of him as an elite, top-3 QB at that point. He was doing well but had an amazing defense, running game, and WR corps.

In his third year he complete under 60% of his passes and led the league in INT's, and even in his 5th year he compiled a 17/15 TD/INT ratio and completed under 60% of his passes again.
That's the 3rd best QB in the league?

While he's been consistently very good since 2009, so have a lot of other QBs. I think for his career he's always been about the 5th to 10th best QB in a given year. I'm not sure that's HOF worthy, but obviously winning two super bowls helps.

Best qbs pf this era-
Barsy, Peyron Manning, Brees, Rodgers, Roethlisberger.

These ar the top 5. Read 'em and weep.

Up and comingers are A. Luck, D. Carr, T. Bridgewater and R. Wlson.

In this golden era of quarterbacks with the absurd numbers put up every week, it's Roethlisberger who will always be the first quarterback with multiple 500-yard passing games. It's Roethlisberger who will always be the first quarterback to throw six touchdowns in back-to-back games. Not Peyton. Not Rodgers. Not Brady. Not Brees. Not the flavor of the month

Wow two freaky back to back games. Put that man in the HOF!

I've always liked Ben and think he deserves to be in the HOF once he's done, but I'm not impressed by the passing numbers. The same goes for every other QB for the past ten years.

I don't care if it's back-to-back six TD games, 500 yard passing games, consecutive games with a TD pass, 5000 yard passing seasons, 70% completion rates, or a 50 TD pass season. The NFL has pushed the advantage so far to the offense, particularly passing, all these passing stats are skewed.

I think that anytime you have the chance to put the 6th-8th best QB of his era in the Hall of Fame, clearly you need to do it. How could we earnestly refer to it as the HoF if we neglected to enshrine the guy who was in the top 25% of the contemporaries at his position? It is also for this reason that we should put in guys who are among the top 25% of their contemporaries at their respective positions. Guys like Devon McCourty, Martellus Bennett, Vincent Jackson, Rodney Hudson, and James Laurenaitis. I mean, if you're not quite the best of the best in your own time, you absolutely have a case to be among the best of the best all-time.

I suppose the question is, what defines a Hall of Fame player? Do we, as fans, want to see QBs inducted on a much lower standard of comparative excellence than other positions? If you can say "He was the fifth best player of his time" is that Hall of Fame worthy when there are, at most, forty guys at the position with any kind of reasonable starter qualifications - and even that includes the rookies sitting on the bench, or the teams with a backup who could start elsewhere? It'd be like saying the 15th best WR is Hall of Fame worthy, or the 10th best RB.

Because you really can't make a case for Big Ben being a top-3 QB for any sustained period. In 2004-05 he had fantastic efficiency, but remarkably low volume, and it's been known for a long time across many sports that as volume goes up, efficiency goes down - so how good would Ben have been if he'd passed an extra ten times per game? As Scott noted, by the time he'd really picked up his game after those first two years, you have some combo of Brady, Brees, Manning, and Rodgers ahead of him.

I just don't see an 85th percentile start, at any position, as Hall of Fame worthy.

"It is also for this reason that we should put in guys who are among the top 25% of their contemporaries at their respective positions. Guys like Devon McCourty, Martellus Bennett, Vincent Jackson, Rodney Hudson, and James Laurenaitis."

Yeah but do those guys have two ringz? I personally can't wait until Chris Snee's HOF induction.

I get that the football HOF is not the same as the baseball HOF but man, do people not care about career length at all? To the point that Ben is being compared to Martellus Bennett?

He's 32 years old. He's already started about as many games as Aikman, McNabb and Hasselbeck. If he plays another 4 or 5 years at roughly his current level, he'll be top ten all time in passing yards and touchdowns. I know you have to adjust the numbers for the era he's playing in, but I'm pretty confident if he does that he'll be in the HOF.

Not sure Kacsmar presents a convincing case, but I'd suggest that, when your cohort includes one QB who seems to be rapidly gaining more and more adherents who deem him the Greatest of All Time, and another QB whose adherents can present reasonable (and also unreasonable, as the infamous "Irrational...Thread" documents in exhaustive, albeit amusing, detail) and coherent arguments that their man is actually better, then being the 5th or 6th best QB of that group isn't all that bad.

If I'm the third smartest guy in the room and other people in the room include Stephen Hawking and Andrew Wiles, I'm feeling pretty intelligent!

"His 22.6 passer rating against Seattle is cited so often you think he never won the game." I've never heard this mentioned before now…

Ben has rarely if ever been a top 5 player at his position.
and he's never been the top player at his position even once. and that's not remotely arguable. there has never been any point in his career in a redraft version of the nfl that he would even rate in the top 10 probably.

he's been a really good qb, and thats it. his analog is boomer esiason, very good for along time, but overshadowed by a good margin by marino, montana, and elway. goodness, he's only even made the probowl twice. at least boomer had an all pro year. and we all know how easy it is to make the pro bowl. only twice, in 10 years. lets try to imagine him as a player not on one the historically well run franchises.

If you'd never once in a players entire career even contemplate putting him among the best at his position, how can they be hall of fame worthy? his name has never been mentioned among the best of his contemporaries. if you aren't even the best among your group, how can you be among the best of all time?

I think the best comp for Roethlisberger is Eli Manning. They each have two rings, they each have less impressive regular season statistics than a number of other quarterbacks, and they are each good enough that they don't have to worry about job security even in down years.

Pittsburgh has had better talent around Roethlisberger than Eli has had, but Roethlisberger's numbers are mostly a bit better as well.

For what it's worth: I am a Steeler fan. I don't love Ben. I would trade him straight up for Manning and Brady, MAYBE Rodgers, MAYBE Brees. Even then, I'm not convinced they'd have performed as well on most of those Steeler teams with the horrible OLs than Ben did. Let's take a qualitative look:

* Brady/Manning are transcendent.
* That said, the Pats went 11-5 without Brady and made Cassell look like a competent QB. Still think Brady is clear #2 of the era.
* The immortal Matt Flynn came in for Rodgers and threw 5/6 TDs in Green Bay, beat the Patriots, etc.
* Brees was not great until he joined Sean Payton. The Saints fell apart without Sean Payton/Bountygate.
* In contrast, the loss of Roethlisberger is generally what causes the Steelers to completely fall apart.
* The Colts went from 14-2 to 1-15 without Manning, and the Broncos went from mediocre to great with him.

The only three QBs I am 100% convinced are carrying their teams, and are not a product of their systems, are Peyton Manning, Roethlisberger and Rivers.

In short, I think looking at what happens to teams when the QB is out should say something.

I want the Steelers to win above all else; and I would not trade Roethlisberger for Wilson, Luck, Rivers, Eli, or Kaepernick. I feel people seriously don't understand how good Ben is because he was underutilized most of his career.

That opinion counts for exactly nothing, and it's probably the dumbest thing you've ever read, but I thought I'd say it anyway. Why not, right?

Throw in one pop culture reference per paragraph and one name drop every other paragraph, and this article would be a spot-on Bill Simmons impression.

NinersNation has GIFs of some of the sacks discussed here: http://www.ninersnation.com/2014/11/6/7166429/49ers-vs-rams-film-breakdown-video-gif-sack-colin-kaepernick

Sheds a little more light on what was going on than just the stills.

I would have replied to some of these earlier, but I've had a rough week.

1. Re: #16 dryheat - I'm sorry but bringing up Martellus Bennett is just absurd. That guy's had 2.5 seasons worth mentioning in his career. Your comment is not a good representation of how the HOF actually works.

In 1994 there were 7 HOF QBs active, and that doesn't yet include Brett Favre. This isn't uncommon. In 1950 there were 8 HOF QBs, despite a league with just 13 teams. In 1970 there were 7 HOF WRs active, and that was well before the passing boom and that's also one of the positions with the poorest representation in Canton. The skill players have an easy way of acquiring "fame" in their careers. You're going to have the 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th (and maybe beyond) best at their position in the HOF, and I don't see anything wrong with that, especially at QB. You could say most of the league is always trying to find the right guy while a lucky 20-25% can feel confident in the one they have as a legit franchise QB.

You act like I suggested Daunte Culpepper for the HOF. Not many QBs start 150+ games. Roethlisberger's in his 11th year. Jim Kelly only played 11 in the NFL. Troy Aikman played 12, and was awful in three of them. What really makes them any better than Ben?

As for the other HOF argument about Ben never being the best at his position - that's true, he hasn't been. But I also don't buy that as a HOF argument for any player at any position. This is also an insanely tough era to be the best QB in a given year. Since Roethlisberger's been in the league, Peyton has usually been the best QB every year except 2007/2010 (Brady) and of course the year he missed (Rodgers in 2011).

2. I hope you guys are just using the stats (DVOA/DYAR) as a guide and not a quick way to end the debate, but serious mentions of Palmer and McNabb lead me to think otherwise. I used DVOA in the article just to signify when he had a really good year. I don't think ranking 2nd in DVOA automatically means that QB was the 2nd best QB that season. I think it suggests he played very well. Try using those DVOA/DYAR rankings on 2001-06 Tom Brady and justify his consensus ranking as a top 2 QB in that time. Good luck. You have to factor in other things too.

If I could pick one number that transcends era rather well, I'd look at YPA: 7.86, ranked 8th all time. For some reason you never hear that one on a broadcast.

3. The 2008 season. I guess you had to watch it to understand, but what Ben did that year was far better than all his shoddy statistics suggest. He played with a separated AC joint in his throwing shoulder, which he first hurt in Week 1 and made worse in Washington. He had a three-game stretch against NYG/WAS/IND where he was playing hurt and missing practices. He accumulated 1 TD, 8 INT in that span of 10 quarters. That's going to kill your season stats. Even in those games he had some bad luck with two Hail Mary picks and I believe Nate Washington gift-wrapped an INT to the Giants on what should have been a completion.

Otherwise that year he had an awful game in Philadelphia behind the worst OL performance I may have ever seen in the NFL. So yeah, he stunk for 4 games and that killed his stats. But look at the rest of the season and he played well behind that inept line against one of the league's toughest schedules. And of course there's that little SB run at the end that season.

4. The 2006 season was Ben's worst, but that's not a bad low point of a career compared to what we've seen from other quarterbacks. Just look at Kurt Warner's abyss (2002-06), or 2005-06 Favre, or Rivers in the later Norv years or Eli Manning in the last few years. Look at how Drew Brees started 2007. Absolutely miserable stuff and he was healthy. That's always key to note.

5. Roethlisberger's statistical down periods can all be related to his health. I mentioned 2008, where he also had a concussion (Week 17). In 2006, he had that emergency appendectomy right before the season started and clearly wasn't at his normal playing weight and strength. He really struggled in those first two games, but you could see him regain his form with great games against KC/ATL before a concussion again slowed him down. In the second half of the season he stunk against Baltimore, which had the best defense that season. Otherwise he was fine.

The third year that looks like a down year statistically was 2011, but again, his worst stats came late in the year when he suffered that high-ankle sprain and tried to play through it, including a road game against a very good 49ers defense. He also struggled in 2012 after returning from that scary rib/aorta injury.

But when healthy, he usually plays very well. The biggest knock on him is a lack of durability, but he's done a good job of avoiding the real serious injuries. Just has a lot of stuff that's kept him out a game or two here and there.

6. Elway comparisons - Yeah I think they've always been there, and that's why he wears No. 7. But as someone mentioned here, compare their passing numbers relative to their peers and it's not even close. Roethlisberger's first 11 years piss all over Elway's.

CONCLUSION - I wrote a simplified 1500 words and not 5000. So I left some things out here, but wasn't going for a big HOF case anyway. I'd like to think it's pretty obvious he's been on a HOF path all this time.

I think his lack of 16-game seasons really hurt his volume stats, costing him respect in the process. Where he struggles in advanced stats is with sacks. I'm not ignoring them, but clearly he's more likely to avoid/break out of more sacks than the average QB, which makes up for some of the long ones he takes. That rare ability of making a play out of nothing also makes up for some of the times he takes a sack trying to do too much. You just have to take the good with the bad in this department with Ben, but it's not like he's Rob Johnson out there.