Former Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger set the news cycle into overdrive last week following the Steelers’ back-to-back losses against a pair of 2-10 teams in the Arizona Cardinals and New England Patriots. He suggested that the Steeler Way had “been lost on this team a little bit.” Since then, a number of former players like Ryan Clark and Chris Hoke have weighed in about the lack of leadership in the locker room and the fading tradition that has been with the organization for so long.
Roethlisberger appeared on the Bleav In Bengals podcast with host Solomon Wilcots on Monday to discuss the upcoming game between the Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals. With Wilcots having played for the Steelers for one season in 1992, the year Dick LeBeau was brought in as the secondary coach, he asked Roethlisberger about his Steeler Way comments.
“Yeah, honestly I just asked a question,” Roethlisberger said. “I wasn’t saying a definitive, ‘Hey, listen, I’m not seeing this.’ I asked the question, is that Steelers way? Is that tradition still there? Is it still talked about? Is it still preached about? Is it still passed down?”
Roethlisberger pointed to one drive in the Steelers-Colts game to prove that the team’s tradition may be fading.
“I was just asking the question,” Roethlisberger continued. “Are we the same physical team? Because that defensive board that said no hundred-yard rushers. Well, Indy goes down the field last week on…13 straight runs. That doesn’t happen. And so, it literally is just a question. Like I said, I’m not in the locker room. I can’t answer it, I can only ask it.”
The conversation is beginning to shift a bit. At first it was mostly centered on the lack of leadership on offense. Now, Roethlisberger is pointing to an uncharacteristic defensive breakdown to support his questioning whether the Steeler Way is fading. There is some important context to consider. After Minkah Fitzpatrick went down with an injury and Damontae Kazee was ejected, the Steelers were dangerously thin up the middle of their defense.
A lot has been made this season about the inside linebacker attrition and its effect on the overall communication of the defense. Some of that can be alleviated by having a guy of Fitzpatrick’s caliber at safety helping with communication, but he was unavailable at that point in the game. The middle of Pittsburgh’s defense was featuring guys like Mykal Walker, Mark Robinson, Trenton Thompson, and Miles Killebrew for portions of the game. That is probably a similar configuration to what the Steelers would feature deep in a preseason game under normal circumstances.
There are many mantras that the Steelers have lived by over the years—Next man up is one of the big ones. It makes sense to a certain point, but when they have two safeties and two linebackers already on IR and they lose another two safeties in-game, that is going to be tough for any team to overcome. Nobody wants to see 13-straight run plays—it is a terrible look for the defense. That being said, it doesn’t feel related to the Steeler Way when put into context. Criticism of the leadership on offense has much more credence but adding insult to—literally—injury on defense seems off base.
