Former Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger always had an interesting relationship with the media. A golden boy very early in his career, he always got attention but not all of it positive. Through his off-field storylines to his vague remarks open for interpretation, the media got their money’s worth out of him. The NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport certainly did, explaining how an early report on Roethlisberger taught him a valuable lesson.
The saga transpired during the 2013 season, though we can’t necessarily take the timeline as gospel. Rapoport said he understood the true magnitude of a story on a famous NFL player after his Roethlisberger reports.
“I reported a bunch of stuff on Big Ben”, Rapoport told Brian Batko on the Chipped Ham and Football podcast. “The team was like, 1-5 and he was real upset, and he was, to my knowledge, venting to people who are close to him. I came out with a series of reports basically about his discontent and then sort of internal wondering, ‘Where is this gonna go”?
“It was a really good introduction to me as a young reporter who thought he knew everything that when you report something on a starting quarterback of a team whose fans care greatly, the reaction is going to be immense.”
Whenever the initial reports surfaced, Rapoport was suggesting by November that Roethlisberger might ask the Steelers to trade him. That very quickly generated pushback, including from Jason La Canfora, who immediately refuted it. Later that afternoon, Roethlisberger called the story from Rapoport “BS”.
Of course, nothing ever materialized, and the Steelers never traded Roethlisberger. Now, we can’t definitively say that Roethlisberger never considered asking for a trade, or even that he didn’t ask. But it’s not like the Steelers would have actually traded him anyway.
For a little trip back in time, recall that the 2013 started out garbage. The Steelers began the season 0-4 and ended the first half of the year 2-6, right as the Rapoport report surfaced. They finished the season on a 6-2 run to break even at 8-8 and had a successful run thereafter.
“The way that blew up was really a good lesson for me. If you report something, you’ve got to be ready for all of it”, Rapoport said of his Roethlisberger report. “That was a really good lesson to understand all sides of something, including the reaction, before you report it”.
Many Steelers fans began their distaste for Rapoport right at this time with his claim that Roethlisberger asked for a trade. While nothing ever materialized, we know that a lot of things almost happen behind the scenes that we otherwise never got a whiff of. We learned more than a decade later that the Steelers did nearly trade Roethlisberger to the 49ers in 2010.
