If given his druthers, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger would more than likely want to run even more no-huddle offense in 2014 than was run last season, but with all of the turnover that has taken place this past offseason at the skill positions, it might take a little while to get everyone on offense back on the same page in order to accomplish that.
“It’s going to be tricky,” said Roethlisberger in a Friday interview with DVE Radio. “Before we lost two of our starters at receiver I think we would have done a lot of it. Now, we just have to see how much they can pick up because there is a lot involved with it, a lot of hand signals, a lot of code words, things like that.”
The Steelers lost wide receivers Emmanuel Sanders and Jerricho Cotchery to free agency during the offseason and they were replaced with Lance Moore and Darrius Heyward-Bey. In addition, the Steelers also figure to have two new passing receiving threats in 2014 after drafting Martavis Bryant and Dri Archer.
In the case of Moore, who spent his first eight seasons in the league with the New Orleans Saints, Roethlisberger appears to think that he won’t have many problems transitioning.
“I know Lance has been in it for a long time (in New Orleans) and understands the game and the league, so hopefully he’ll pick it up quick and we can get the young guys kind of going with it, too,” said the Steelers quarterback.
The Steelers first set of OTA practices get underway on Tuesday and it’s the perfect time to start working on getting all of this ironed out as soon as possible. While Markus Wheaton didn’t play much on offense in 2013, he and fellow starter Antonio Brown should both be able to transition easily when it comes to picking up the new language and hand signals.
“As soon as they can pick it up the more we can use it,” Roethlisberger said.
