Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has a lot of memorable moments in the Black and Gold. One of his most well-known moments is the time he threw 12 touchdowns in two weeks. Back in 2014 Roethlisberger threw six touchdowns in back-to-back weeks against the Indianapolis Colts and Baltimore Ravens.
Today on his podcast, Footbahlin With Ben Roethlisberger, the quarterback recalled those two games.
“That was crazy,” Roethlisberger said. “That was two weeks of almost just like, they talk about being in the zone, athletes talk about that zone, and literally it’s like nothing you can do is wrong. To throw six touchdowns, that’s a lot. You got to be making it happen, early and often. So much so that I think one of them, I think against Baltimore, and it might’ve been the fifth or sixth one, was a ball I threw to my good friend Matt Spaeth. And it was kind of like a ball where I overthrew it and I’m like ‘Okay that’s way over his head,’ or something like that and it ends up falling right in his arms and he scores a touchdown.”
The “zone” is something that every athlete looks to get into, an almost a mystical place where nothing can go wrong, and for Roethlisberger he had that extended time in the zone. Over those two weeks he amassed 12 touchdown passes, 822 passing yards, on 65 completed passes and no interceptions. In those two games he had an unbelievable completion percentage of 76%.
It was important for him to play well too as the Steelers defense didn’t give him much help, allowing 34 and 23 points, respectively, in the two games. The 2014 season was one of Roethlisberger’s best, highlighted by that two-game stretch, something we may never see again from an NFL quarterback.
Roethlisberger talked about how fun it was to be in the zone those weeks and took a little jab at his hated rivals, the Baltimore Ravens.
“It’s just one of those things, especially doing it against Baltimore is pretty fun,” he said. “Things are going right and literally every pass you make you just feel like guys are wide open. Even when they’re not it doesn’t matter, you never second guess a pass.”
When watching those games it really did feel like people were wide open all the time. Now it may have helped that he had a damn good receiving corps of Antonio Brown, Martavis Bryant, and Markus Wheaton. Also, the Colts and Ravens did not have too good of secondaries, but Roethlisberger still had to make the passes.
That he did and because of it we got one of the most memorable moments of his time in a Steelers jersey. And while we have the Super Bowls to look back on, sometimes regular-season games are equally fun to look back on. Those two games were just complete domination from one of the greatest quarterbacks of his generation and showed how dominant he and the Steelers offense could be. It also ushered in the ‘Killer Bs” era which was a whole lot of fun, even if the team came up short of the ultimate goal of a Super Bowl.
As the offseason meanders on, it is fun to look back at some great memories of the Steelers of the past.
Especially a memory that is approaching a decade old.
