Are you ready for a laugh? Because I’ve got one for you today. I’m not sure what kind of positivity I’m generating for him and the program he’s on, but I can’t not point this out. Yesterday, retired NFL player Chris Canty said on the First Things First program on ESPN that he thinks people within the Pittsburgh Steelers organization are praying for Ben Roethlisberger to retire. I’m just going to let him speak for himself.
I’m sure there are people within that organization that are praying that Ben Roethlisberger decides’ he’s going to retire, because I think that would give them a few more options in terms of how they manage their salary cap.
This is a guy that has flirted openly with deciding whether or not he’s going to walk away. I think this is the offseason where people in the Pittsburgh Steelers front office, Kevin Colbert included, and praying that he decides he’s going to retire after having Tommy John surgery, because the two-year, $68 million contract extension they gave him last offseason looks like an awful deal right now. An awful deal.
Right now he’s got a $33.5 million hit on the salary cap. If they cut him, it’s $25 million, so you do save $8.5 million, but how much of that would you have to use in order to find a replacement?
So I just feel like their hands are tied in terms of whether or not they should make the decision to move forward with Ben, because any quarterback that you get on the open marketplace, whether you trade for him or you sign him as a free agent, is going to cost you more than you would save from moving on from Ben, so I think they’re in a tough spot. This is a team, a year ago, that was a contending team up until Week 16.
What he’s saying is really quite remarkable for multiple reasons. Basically, he actually understands what the situation is, and yet he still reaches the wrong conclusion. He understands that, in spite of Roethlisberger’s very large cap number, releasing him only saves the team about a fourth of that space. He also understands that you’re not going to get a starting quarterback for that savings.
The only thing he doesn’t make clear, yet I’m willing to be he does know, is the reality that the Steelers are up against the cap already, and that their focus is getting Bud Dupree under contract. I think he knows this, and he still believes—or at least claims for tv purposes—there are people within the organization who want Roethlisberger to retire rather than try to return from his injury and hope he can play at a high level.
This, my friends, is the art of the hot take, and it’s patently absurd. Nobody, at least nobody of any significance, within the Steelers organization has any desire to see Roethlisberger retire. The very suggestion is actually quite comical, especially given the reality that they can’t possibly realistically acquire a more desirable alternative than a possibly healthy Roethlisberger for 2020.
By the way, it’s never been stated before that he had Tommy John surgery. He wouldn’t know that. But that’s not even important.
“There are people in the Steelers organization praying Big Ben retires. That would give them a few more options on how they’re going to manage their salary cap. The 2-year, $68M contract extension they gave him last offseason looks like an awful deal right now.” — @ChrisCanty99 pic.twitter.com/BmgpGkTTb7
— First Things First (@FTFonFS1) February 11, 2020
