The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2021 season is underway, and they are hoping for a better outcome in comparison to last season. After starting out 11-0, they finished the year 1-4 in the regular season, and then lost in the Wildcard Round to the Cleveland Browns, ignited by a 0-28 first quarter.
They have lost a large number of key players in the offseason, like Maurkice Pouncey, Bud Dupree, Alejandro Villanueva, David DeCastro, Mike Hilton, and Steven Nelson, but they’ve also made significant additions as the months have gone on, notably Trai Turner, Melvin Ingram, Joe Schobert, and Ahkello Witherspoon. They also added Najee Harris, Pat Freiermuth, Kendrick Green, and Dan Moore Jr., all of whom are starting.
There isn’t much left to do but to play the games at this point. Even if they play them poorly. They still have a lot to figure out, though, such as what Matt Canada’s offense is going to look like in any given week, or how the new-look secondary and offensive line is going to play.
These are the sorts of questions among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked. There is rarely a concrete answer, but this is your venue for exploring the topics we present through all their uncertainty.
Question: How much are Ben Roethlisberger’s throwing mechanics still affected by his hip injury?
You have no doubt seen the pictures of Ben Roethlisberger’s derrière in recent games and how it has been particularly plump of late due to some extra cushioning—literal cushioning, that is, in the form of protective pads, in order to provide some extra protection due to a hip injury that he suffered earlier in the year.
The veteran quarterback recently talked about how that injury has affected his throwing mechanics and how he has tried to will his way through them, how it’s led to him trying to compensate by relying too much purely on his arm to get the ball from his hand to the target.
“I was opening up, I was over-striding”, he said, “basically trying to figure out a way to make it all come from” his upper body. “Forget the bottom part, let’s focus on the top, core and arms. Because of pain” in his hip.
These were remarks made weeks ago; he has since played in another game and had a bye week since then. How much has the pain in his hip subsided since then, and how much might that have alleviated some of the stress he has put on his throwing mechanics?
Some of the things that Roethlisberger talked about having to do in order to compensate are evident on film, so we’ll certainly be able to judge on Sunday how his hip is feeling if he is still tending to default into the same positions and mechanics. And you can bet we’ll be talking about it one way or another, because if he’s not feeling better now, chances are it’s not going to improve much this year.
