The Pittsburgh Steelers are one of only a relative handful of teams who have a quarterback who can win a Super Bowl in today’s NFL. While other teams with less qualified quarterbacks might also be capable of winning the Super Bowl with said quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger is among those who can legitimately win it for the team.
Just don’t tell Gregg Rosenthal that, who recently for some reason was allowed to post his quarterback rankings via the league’s website. In an article headlined ‘Finally, it’s Philip Rivers’ year’, the columnist ranked Roethlisberger as the 15th-best quarterback in the league right now. Of 15 ranked.
“More erratic than at any time in recent memory, perhaps Roethlisberger’s 2018 campaign got on track in Week 6 after the familiar sensation of playing his best game of the season against the Bengals”, he wrote. Apparently he doesn’t remember last season, during which he was more erratic up to this point of the season than he has been this year. Or has he forgotten the ‘maybe I don’t have it anymore’ drama following a five-interception performance in week five in 2017?
Either way, it’s an absurd thing to say about a quarterback who has thrown for over 2000 yards in six games, averaging over 65 percent on completions, with 12 touchdowns to six interceptions, only three of which have come over the past five weeks. He is averaging a quite healthy 7.8 yards per attempt as well, which is better than what he finished with last year. He was averaging under seven yards per attempt at this time in 2017.
Among the quarterbacks that Rosenthal feels is better than Roethlisberger right now is Baltimore Ravens elite Joe Flacco, who is lighting it up with 6.8 yards per pass attempt and a stellar nine touchdown passes and the second-lowest completion percentage on the list behind, oddly, Aaron Rodgers.
Also ahead of Roethlisberger is Andy Dalton of the Cincinnati Bengals. Dalton is completing 65.1 percent of his passes while averaging 7.3 yards per attempt, throwing for 1674 yards with 14 touchdown passes, but also seven interceptions.
Yet another quarterback whom Rosenthal is currently better than Big Ben is Andrew Luck. While he has thrown 15 touchdowns for his one-win Indianapolis Colts team that is consistently playing from behind, he has thrown eight interceptions and has averaged just 6.2 yards per attempt.
Even crediting the author’s notion that Roethlisberger may not be playing the best football of his career, it’s still pretty baffling that he could get away with ranking him behind 14 other quarterbacks
