Since Ben Roethlisberger retired, the Pittsburgh Steelers have been floundering at quarterback. They tried to find his successor in Kenny Pickett, but that failed. Now they’re stuck trying to put a Band-Aid on the problem. That shouldn’t be surprising, though. Finding a franchise quarterback is much easier said than done. However, Shannon Sharpe believes Mike Tomlin deserves more blame for not having a proper plan in place to replace Roethlisberger.
“When Ben was getting old, not the last year, but when Ben was getting old, did they go out and get another quarterback?” Sharpe asked recently on his Nightcap podcast. “When [Brett] Favre was getting old, what did the Packers do? They went and got [Aaron] Rodgers.
“When Rodgers was getting old, what did they do? They went out and got Jordan Love. When Ben Roethlisberger was getting old, what did they do? They let him wither on the vine. That’s Tomlin.”
It’s true that Roethlisberger did not look like the same player during his last few years in the NFL. After returning from the season-ending elbow injury he sustained in 2019, it was clear he’d taken a step back. Although the Steelers still felt like they were contenders, those final two years with Roethlisberger at the helm weren’t the same.
Sharpe believes some of the blame for that should be on Tomlin, which is fair to a point. While Tomlin has a heavy hand in personnel decisions, it’s unclear if he had the clout to get the Steelers to move on from Roethlisberger. That might have been a decision that came down to the team’s owner. Tomlin values winning, though, so it’s likely that he wanted to maximize every year he had with Roethlisberger.
Hindsight is 20/20,. Coming off a 2018 season where he threw for over 5,000 yards, Roethlisberger looked like he had a lot of football left. Unfortunately, things changed quickly, and the Steelers were forced to consider life without Roethlisberger sooner than they had hoped.
Sharpe makes a good point by comparing the Steelers to the Green Bay Packers. Coming off a year where they were only one game away from the Super Bowl, the Packers drafted Love in the first round. That decision seemed idiotic at the time. Rodgers proceeded to win MVP twice, making the Packers look like even bigger fools. However, it’s looking more and more like the Packers made the right decision.
It’s unclear if Love is ever going to be as good as Rodgers, but he’s better than him right now. The Packers have some hope for their future, while the New York Jets, who traded for Rodgers, just dealt with two miserable seasons.
Maybe the Steelers should’ve tried to more seriously find Roethlisberger’s successor before his level of play plummeted. Had they drafted a quarterback in the first round before he retired, they could have more direction at this point.
Instead, there’s no clear solution to their quarterback problem. There were pros and cons to what the Steelers did, and it’s hard to totally fault Tomlin. Moving on from a franchise quarterback is difficult.
