As Rivers leaves stage, Big Ben remains in spotlight
before the 2004 NFL Draft, Philip Rivers figured his career would start somewhere other than San Diego.
Try east of Mission Valley. By some 2,100 miles.
“In all honesty,” Rivers said recently, “I had thought I was going to be in Pittsburgh.”
The vision of Rivers attired in Steelers black and gold, wearing No. 17 and a gold towel, isn’t easily formed.
Instead it was Ben Roethlisberger who went to the the Steelers, an AFC powerhouse that had reached five of the 38 Super Bowls when Rivers entered the NFL.
Rivers and Roethlisberger.
Roethlisberger and Rivers.
Now, finally, the former AFC rivals’ paths have diverged.
Rivers, 39, announced last month he’s done playing, and Roethlisberger, 39, said Thursday he’ll return to the Steelers this season.
So it will be Rivers who goes first onto a Pro Football Hall of Fame ballot, followed by Big Ben at least one year later.
If Drew Brees retires this offseason as seems likely — he’s 42 and, per wife Brittany, has a torn rotator cuff — he’ll go on the same Hall ballot as friend and former Chargers teammate Rivers.
Brees won a Super Bowl, made 13 Pro Bowls and is the NFL leader in career passing yardage. Only Tom Brady has more touchdown passes.
Big Ben went to three Super Bowls, winning two. Not only a sharp pocket passer, he improvised big plays off scrambles and pump fakes.
So Rivers figures to see Brees and Big Ben get gold jackets before voters are ready to give him his best shot at induction. Brady, 43, and Aaron Rodgers, 37, could extend his holding pattern.
A fine sendoff season may have made it less difficult for Rivers to quit a job he still seemed to love.
Protected well by Colts blockers in his first season away from the Chargers, he helped Indianapolis to go 11-5 and reach the playoffs one year after his miserable final season with Team Spanos.
He played well in his last game. It took rare playmaking by Bills quarterback Josh Allen to give favored Buffalo the 27-24 playoff victory.
When he exchanged his helmet for a high school coach’s whistle, Rivers ensured he’d taken his final sack. The decision allowed him, wife Tiffany and their nine children to settle near family in Alabama.
Roethlisberger wasn’t ready to move on despite his two Super Bowl rings and more than $200 million in career earnings.
It wasn’t hard to make sense of his decision to take a $5 million pay cut and return for $14 million.
Coming off reconstructive elbow surgery, he played well last season while the Steelers started 11-0. He had 25 touchdown passes, six interceptions and a 99.0 passer rating.
He failed to maintain that work, a potential yellow flag for next season. Looking like an old quarterback, he fell off badly.
But in his final game of the regular season, making plays beyond the talent of his backup Mason Rudolph, 25, Roethlisberger found some old magic to rally the Steelers past the Colts. The Big Ben revival, which didn’t extend to Pittsburgh’s playSoon off opener, forced Rivers, who had two critical turnovers that day at Heinz Field, to open the postseason at Buffalo.
Outsiders who see concussive hits underestimate the difficulty of giving up the intensity of NFL competition.
“There’s nothing like it,” Hank Bauer, a former special tams star of the “Air Coryell” Chargers, said last month while acknowledging the dangers of head trauma.
Bauer gave a famous example: The thrilling 41-38 playoff victory San Diego’s 1981 team earned against the Dolphins, in overtime at the Orange Bowl.
“Coming back from the Miami game, you see 20,000 people at the parking lot, waiting on us in San Diego,” he said.
Bauer noted the flip side of that event. That night, he returned to an empty home by himself. “It can be very difficult. You go from 100 mph to zero.”
For the Steelers, the immediate challenge will be to weather a salary-cap crunch. The tougher task will be to obtain a worthy successor to Big Ben, unless, stunningly, either Rudolph or Dwayne Haskins emerges.
GM Kevin Colbert has to bolster the blocking and find an explosive running back if Big Ben is to make a final Super Bowl push.
Roethlisberger would recharge the ground game by taking more snaps under center, diversifying the offense, and would boost the deep-pass game by holding the ball longer.
Unfortunately, he’d take more hits as a result. And that’s where his age will work against him.