Life as an NFL player can be cruel sometimes. Not everybody can be Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, playing for over 15 years and racking up accolades and money. Most of the time, players find out very quickly how much of a business the NFL really is, being drafted to a team only to barely ever play with them, eventually flaming out of the league. Nobody envisions themselves as a career backup. Former Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback Brian St. Pierre knows this all too well, as he ended up barely playing in the league despite having an eight year career. However, that didn’t stop him from chasing opportunities.
St. Pierre was drafted by the Steelers in the fifth round of the 2003 draft. Any hopes he had of becoming the starter died very shortly after that, as Pittsburgh drafted Ben Roethlisberger in the first round the following year. St. Pierre spent the first two years of his career with the Steelers before being claimed off waivers by the Baltimore Ravens right before the start of the 2005 season. In a recent interview with the Recruiting Board YouTube channel, St. Pierre explained this process and why he was forced to go to Baltimore.
“They actually cut me at the end of my third year of camp to try and bring me back in the following week, but they wanted to try and finagle a roster spot,” St. Pierre said. “So I made final cuts, then they cut me after final cuts just to try and do a one for one, roster wise, and then bring me back. Then Baltimore picked me up. I had to go. As a young guy, you don’t have rights in terms of, if they put a waiver claim in, you have to go.”
It sounds like that’s what happened with the Steelers and their 53-man roster after training camp, but maybe a player they liked was cut by another team and was available. Therefore, they cut St. Pierre in order to free up a roster spot to bring in this other player, thinking they could either sign St. Pierre to the practice squad or bring him back another way soon after. However, St. Pierre had to pass through waivers before he could revert back to the Steelers, and he didn’t because the Ravens placed a claim on him.
It’s a process that still happens pretty often today, with teams’ rosters never truly set immediately after final cuts because they could still be looking to add at certain positions. It just so happened that the Steelers’ plan backfired and they were unable to retain St. Pierre. While he may have returned to the Steelers in 2006, St. Pierre explains in the same interview how he could’ve come back sooner, but chose not to, and Pittsburgh was not too pleased with him.
“I went to Baltimore and I was on the practice squad for the first couple weeks. Ben gets hurt and Pittsburgh calls and wants me to come back, and I told them no,” St. Pierre said. “I told them no because Ozzie Newsome in Baltimore said, ‘We’re gonna bring you up on the roster.’ I saw more of a chance. At the time, it was Kyle Boller and Anthony Wright at quarterback versus a first round pick. I came in with Kyle Boller, he wasn’t Ben Roethlisberger. Saw a potential chance there, so I stayed in Baltimore, and Pittsburgh was mad.”
The injury to Roethlisberger that St. Pierre is talking about occurred in Week 5 against the San Diego Chargers, which caused him to miss the following week and a handful of other games later that year when it was re-aggravated. It’s clear the Steelers thought highly of St. Pierre if they wanted him back so badly and were so spurned when he chose to stay with the Ravens. That kind of animosity between rival teams still exists today and most certainly had a part to play in their ire.
The Steelers definitely got the last laugh in this exchange though, as they managed to recover from the Roethlisberger injury to go on to win a Super Bowl that year. St. Pierre, on the other hand, left the Ravens after that season and returned to the Steelers for the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Unfortunately, and almost unbelievably, St. Pierre left the team again and spent the 2008 season with the Arizona Cardinals, the team the Steelers would defeat in that year’s Super Bowl.
Nobody may be as unlucky as St. Pierre, missing both Steelers’ Super Bowls and never really having a chance to start. However, he still had a decently long career, which is something to be proud of. His story is just another example of how the stars can be so unaligned for some players. For every Cinderella ending, there’s ten horror stories. The Steelers may have been upset when St. Pierre chose their bitter rival over them, but it’s just another part of their own fairy tale that was capped off with a Lombardi Trophy.
