It’s probably not a big surprise that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger didn’t play well Sunday in the team’s 21-14 road loss to the Baltimore Ravens. After all, the Steelers quarterback has a long history of not being at his best in games played in Baltimore in addition to not playing well in his first games back from injury.
Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said after Sunday’s loss that he had no regrets when it comes to his decision to let Roethlisberger play almost three weeks after he needed the meniscus in his left knee repaired.
“I’ll let him talk about things relative to his play in that regard,” said Tomlin when asked if he thought Roethlisberger played tentatively against the Ravens. “He was healthy enough to play, he was willing to play. We made the decision, we won’t second guess, we won’t look back at all. I appreciate his efforts and his display of will.”
Despite Roethlisberger playing poorly in the first three quarters of Sunday’s loss to the Ravens, Tomlin said after the game that he never considered replacing him with backup quarterback Landry Jones.
While Roethlisberger appeared to have mobility Sunday, he was very inaccurate for most of the game with his throws. It wasn’t until the Steelers offense got in hurry-up mode in the fourth quarter that Roethlisberger started to look more like himself and started to connect with his wide receivers down the field. Because of that, Tomlin was asked after the game why more no-huddle wasn’t used earlier in the contest.
“We just weren’t interested in getting one dimensional,” Tomlin said. “We felt that we still had time. Obviously, the climate changed once the punt got blocked. But prior to that, we felt comfortable in terms of our ability to get it going because we were stopping them, minus the big play that we gave up to (Mike) Wallace, we were playing good enough defense that we felt like we didn’t have to get one dimensional from a personality standpoint. The blocked punt changed those things.”
