The Pittsburgh Steelers have worked quite a bit on their no-huddle offense over the course of the offseason practices and with all of that work comes the expectation that we’ll see it a lot in 2014. During a radio interview last week on 105.9 The X, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger talked about how much he envisions it being used.
“I don’t know if it will be the first series, but I think you’ll see it quite a bit,” said Roethlisberger. “This minicamp, so far we’ve had 15 periods and 10 of them have been no-huddle. We really want to make sure that we’re good at it, because we don’t want it to be a change-up kind of offense, where we go to it if we’re down or need to change the tempo. We want to do it because that’s when we’re at our best.”
Roethlisberger went on to say why he likes the no-huddle so much and why he’s had so much success with it when given the opportunity to run it.
“I think it’s because you’re changing the tempo,” started Roethlisberger. “A traditional set, when the offensive coordinator is calling a play and a defensive coordinator is calling a play, it’s like a game of chess. You’re calling off of what you think the other guy is going to do. So offensively you’re calling what you think the defense is going to do and vice versa.
“It’s kind of a game of guessing, a game of chance, a game of tendencies. When you’re running the no-huddle, you’re kind of calling plays based off of what you see. So you’re not guessing quite as a much. You can kind of get the defense into predictable sets and different blitzes and such, and then you can try to take advantage of it.”
Roethlisberger also admits that he really loves calling plays on top of everything else.
“I really do,” he said. “It’s like having the ball in your hands in a basketball game or whatever. You’re in control and you can spread the ball around. You can get the ball in the hand of someone who is hot. You’ve got matchup problems. If you’ve got Heath Miller on a linebacker or someone, or Antonio Brown on a guy, you can take advantage of opportunities.”
Whether or not Roethlisberger will get more of those opportunities this season lays in the hands of offensive coordinator Todd Haley. Roethlisberger, however, was quick to point out that his relationship with Haley has definitely grown over the years.
“People made a really big deal out of it early that we hated each other and all this and that. It was never that way,” said Roethlisberger. “It was just a new relationship, so there was a learning, growing, feeling out-type period. I think now we’ve grown. We’ve been together a couple of years, now. We’ve learned a lot about each other and I would say it’s a very good working relationship.”
