As a whole last season, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger didn’t post great numbers when it came to deep passes down the field and especially during the first half of the season. Even so, Roethlisberger was still credited with making 29 big-time throws outside the number last season by Pro Football Focus and that tied him for the most in the NFL with Baker Mayfield and Russel Wilson.
So, what equates to a big-time throw in the eyes of PFF? Below is a quick definition from their website:
In its simplest terms, a big-time throw is on the highest end of both difficulty and value. While the value is easy to see statistically, the difficulty has more to do with passes that have a lower completion percentage the further the ball is thrown down the field. Therefore, the big-time throw is best described as a pass with excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown further down the field and/or into a tighter window.
While PFF doesn’t identify any of the big-time throws made last season by Roethlisberger, it’s not to imagine several of those throws not being to wide receiver Antonio Brown. In fact, the two touchdown passes to Brown below against the atalanta Falcons and the Carolina Panthers are the first two that jumped into my mind once I saw the Tuesday tweet from PFF. I’m also guessing the deep pass to wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster against the Cincinnati Bengals also qualified as a big-time throw by Roethlisberger.
It would be great if PFF would identify the big-time receptions as well, but it doesn’t appear as though they do.
In case you’re curious, PFF also has Roethlisberger down as registering a total of 42 big-time throws last season and that was second-most in the NFL.
