Mike Greenberg’s Steelers Mount Rushmore: Chuck Noll, Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, and Franco Harris check every box if you’re building a shrine to the 1970s. But leaving Ben Roethlisberger off the list isn’t just a snub. That’s erasing a modern era that defined Pittsburgh football for two decades.
The case for the all-70s list came down to one word: legacy. Greenberg argued on The Russo & Rizzo Show that “pro football is what it is today because of the Steelers and the Cowboys in the 70s.” No one’s disputing that. The league exploded in that decade, and Pittsburgh was at the heart of it. But there’s a difference between honoring history and being stuck in it.
Roethlisberger wasn’t just a great quarterback. He carried the franchise into the modern era. Mike Russo called him “the boogeyman”, the guy who could hold off three defenders and still throw a 60-yard touchdown. That’s not mythologizing, that’s game tape.
From the moment he arrived, the Steelers stopped being a team trying to figure it out and became contenders again. Russo made the point that before Ben, it was touchdown Tommy Maddox. After Ben, it was trophies. Cowher finally got his ring with Roethlisberger under center. Tomlin won with Ben, too. He was the constant in a changing league.
Greenberg said the toughest omission was between Bradshaw and Ben, but he gave Bradshaw the edge because of the ring count, four versus two. That’s the kind of surface-level math that ignores context. Bradshaw played on one of the greatest teams ever assembled. Ben was often the team. He evolved with the league. He carried bad defenses. He kept them relevant for nearly two decades.
As for Franco, the Immaculate Reception is iconic, and no one is denying it. But if you’re building a monument to who shaped this franchise over time, Roethlisberger has to be on it. He’s not just part of the story. He is the modern chapter.
You can’t keep the whole mountain stuck in one decade. Without Ben, there’s no second era of greatness and no bridge to where the Steelers are today.
