Big Ben’s ‘bad blood’? If it exists, it’s only natural

Steelers history is littered with tough separations

Gerry Dulac does a weekly Steelers chat for the PostGazette. I never miss a word. No one in the Pittsburgh media is more wired in to the team.

That’s why Dulac’s answer to a reader’s question last week reached out, grabbed me and slapped me in the face:

Billy Bob: Is there bad blood between the Steelers and Big Ben with how his career ended? Was he ready to retire or was it a Troy-type situation where he was forced into it?

Dulac: I would say it’s very very safe to assume that.

I believe there is some truth there.

Ben Roethlisberger hinted as much a few weeks ago during an interview on WDVE when he said there was no chance he would pull a Tom Brady and come out of retirement: “First off, my coach and GM don’t want me back.”

I also believe it’s perfectly normal for athletes to have uneasy feelings with their team about retirement, even if those feelings don’t reach bad-blood level. It’s always tough for those guys to walk away from their sport. They love what they do. They love the competition. They love the money that they make. Perhaps most significantly, they think they still can play when it is obvious to everyone else that they can’t.

Accepting that his career is over is a brutal challenge for any player.

Billy Bob referred to Troy Polamalu in his question for Dulac. Polamalu didn’t want to retire after the 2014 season and seemed to hold a grudge when the Steelers told him they weren’t going to bring him back for 2015. It was a grudge that lasted at least until he was inducted into the Hall of Fame last August. But Polamalu was wrong. If anything, the team did him a

“I’m pretty content with where I’m at. Being a bus driver, making lunches in the morning.” — Ben Roethliserger, interview on WDVE

favor by keeping him an extra year. His skills had badly waned.

The same is true of Hines Ward. He didn’t even remotely resemble his Super Bowl-MVP self in 2011, his final NFL season. He initially planned on playing with another team in 2012 after the Steelers released him but decided against it, just as Polamalu had done. Both always will be remembered as alltime Steelers greats.

I think of Casey Hampton. Legend has it he was upset when the Steelers told him he no longer was wanted after the 2012 season, so upset that he went straight to the airport after getting the news at team headquarters and took a flight home to Texas rather than returning to his Pittsburgh home to pick up his things.

Walking away from the game really is difficult for a player, just as it is for a team to tell a great player his services no longer are needed.

Some players have to be dragged off the field. I grew up in Beaver Falls and watched hometown hero Joe Namath embarrass himself with the Los Angeles

Rams at the end of his Hall of Fame career. Hall of Famer Johnny Unitas did the same thing with the San Diego Chargers. There are countless other examples.

It’s easy to think Roethlisberger didn’t especially care for how his career ended with the Steelers. There was speculation after the 2020 season that Kevin Colbert and Mike Tomlin didn’t want him back but were overruled by Art Rooney II after Roethlisberger agreed to take a $5 million pay cut. Roethlisberger wasn’t horrible last season, as Namath and Unitas were at the end, but his skills had diminished the way they do for all players except for the aforementioned Brady. It was time for him to retire, whether he was pushed or did so on his terms. He always will be remembered as the Steelers’ best all-time quarterback and a winner of two Super Bowls. He also did OK financially, making more than $267 million, according to spotrac.com.

All of that should go a long way to easing any bad feelings Roethlisberger might have with the Steelers — if those feelings haven’t already been eased.

Go back to that interview withWDVE.

“Second of all, I’m pretty content with where I’m at,” Roethlisberger said. “Being a bus driver, making lunches in the morning.”

That wasn’t a Hall of Fame quarterback talking.

That was a full-time husband and father of three.