In an 18-year career filled with plenty of individual accolades and places held in the history books of the NFL and the Pittsburgh Steelers, Ben Roethlisberger casts all of the individual accolades aside for one single thing that stands above the rest in his NFL career.
No, it’s not the Super Bowl trophies, the Pro Bowl berths, or the individual NFL records for performances in a single game. Instead, one accomplishment that’s overlooked in Roethlisberger’s career — or at least draws some eye rolls — that stands above the rest in the future Hall of Famer’s mind is the fact that in 18 seasons as the starting quarterback in Pittsburgh, he never had a losing season under head coaches Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin.
Speaking with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Ron Cook Wednesday ahead of the first Steelers’ training camp without him in 18 seasons, Roethlisberger talked about what made him most proud in his illustrious NFL career, one that will end up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Surprisingly, it was the fact that he never had a losing season, rather than some individual accolades, or the Super Bowls, which I honestly expected him to touch on.
“Never having a losing season,” Roethlisberger said to Cook about what made him most proud, according to original reporting from the Post-Gazette. “Obviously, the Super Bowls were awesome. I love being able to win two championships for this city.
“But I just wanted to win. I didn’t care how I won. I didn’t have to put up 500, 600, 700 yards and 10 touchdowns. That didn’t matter to me. It never did,” Roethlisberger added. “I don’t know if people believed me, but it’s true. I’m that way with everything. I don’t care if I blow you out. I just want to beat you. For me to have the record that I had — that we had — and to never have a losing season in 18 seasons, that should go down as one of the greatest accomplishments. It means so much to me that I won football games.”
Roethlisberger did a lot of winning in his time in the black and gold, racking up 165 regular season wins in 247 starts, good for a .668 winning percentage with the Steelers. In the playoffs, Roethlisberger helped pilot the Steelers to another 13 wins in 23 playoff starts, winning Super Bowls XL and XLIII with the Steelers under Cowher and Tomlin.
Though Roethlisberger was able to put up some incredible numbers each week as the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, it’s hard to not believe him when it comes to him just wanting to win football games, no matter how it looked. At times late in his career, it was ugly. But a win is a win, and Roethlisberger did a lot of winning down the stretch, especially late in the 2021 season as he helped lead the Steelers to the playoffs one final time, recording a career high in fourth-quarter comebacks and game-winning drives.
