Two-time Super Bowl champion and former Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger kicked a figurative hornet’s nest when he started questioning whether the team had lost the proverbial “Steelers Way” after losing to the New England Patriots just over a week ago. He caught a lot of flak from all corners of the NFL world with some like former NFL LB and Pittsburgh native LaVar Arrington even questioning whether Roethlisberger could ask that question.
So when Roethlisberger’s former teammate and former Super Bowl champion OL Trai Essex joined The Fan Morning Show on 93.7 The Fan Friday, he was asked about Roethlisberger’s standing in his own locker room during his playing days due to his lack of Team MVP awards during the last decade of his career.
“I really don’t know,” Essex said. “There was a lot of talent on the team at the time. It was a youth movement happening at the same time with the guys that came in and the guys that left. It was in that weird spot where he was a vet, but nobody really a part of his classes had really lasted as long as he did.”
When the Steelers drafted Roethlisberger in 2004, he joined a fairly veteran team with players like RB Jerome Bettis and WR Hines Ward already firmly entrenched on the offensive side of the ball. That certainly helped Roethlisberger acclimate to the NFL and allowed him to get comfortable without having t0 be the vocal leader of the offense.
However, over time, Roethlisberger oversaw a changing locker room without a whole lot of peers. In his own draft class, only OT Max Starks and DB Ricardo Colclough lasted with the Steelers for more than two seasons, and Colclough played four seasons in Pittsburgh.
Roethlisberger did get voted the Team MVP in 2009, but it was the one and only such award of his career. That noticeable gap over the final decade-plus of his career led to some questioning whether Roethlisberger was viewed well in his own locker room. Evidently, Essex doesn’t believe that the lack of awards is a problem.
“To be truthfully honest, some of that is a popularity contest,” Essex said. “There are guys who are deserving, I think the guys who got it did deserve it, Antonio [Brown] quite a few of those years and Le’Veon [Bell] I know got it as well. I really don’t know why he wasn’t voted, but I think it had something to do with just not being able to relate as much to the youth generation that came after him.”
Brown won the award four times in his career (2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017) while Bell won it twice (2014 and 2016.) Brown was drafted six years after Roethlisberger in 2010 and Bell was drafted in 2013. That represents a large time gap from Roethlisberger to the core skill position players around him.
Does that mean Roethlisberger was viewed in a bad way in the locker room? Well, Brown got his awards thanks in large part to Roethlisberger throwing him the ball, and Bell was a great dual-threat running back and was targeted 397 times in his five years in Pittsburgh.
And evidently, Roethlisberger did not anger or alienate Essex during their time in the locker room, at least to the degree that Essex wanted to speak about issues. So whether you agree with Roethlisberger’s comments or not, it does not appear that the players around him viewed him as someone not worthy of being listened to whether he was Team MVP or not.
