Joe Starkey column,
At 37, Big Ben is what he is and he isn’t changing
Welcome back to the topic that will not die: Ben Roethlisberger’s leadership.
I’ll wait until the eye rolls cease.
Always a subject of fascination, Ben’s leadership has been (apologies to Arlo Guthrie here) inspected, detected, selected, infected and definitely not neglected over these past eight months. Or ever since Antonio Brown walked out on his team and began a very public smear campaign against his nowformer quarterback.
Instead of diminishing as the season began, it only heated up. From seemingly everywhere, and from seemingly everyone, the questions have been asked, often breathlessly …
• What did it mean that Ben invited teammates to his summer lake house after going a few years without doing so?
• Does Ben take too many days off?
• Does Ben have too much power?
• Did Ben’s radio show hurt too many tender feelings?
• How come Ben never wins team MVP?
• Is Ben taking tangible steps to improve his leadership skills?
I’ll jump in here with some breaking news: At 37, Ben probably isn’t changing.
He is what he is as an offthe-field leader. He has strengths and weaknesses and is never going to be universally beloved by teammates, in the mold of a Tom Brady or a Drew Brees. People don’t naturally gravitate toward Roethlisberger. That’s just true. He is more like an Aaron Rodgers than a Brady or a Brees in that respect.
But here’s the other piece of breaking news: Roethlisberger’s on-field leadership is way more important than whether he takes the guys for a boat ride or says hello to the long-snapper at the lockerroom door.
It was Roethlisberger himself, in one of his many national interviews to start the season, who said it best. ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio asked how it felt to have his leadership questioned so heavily.
“It hurt,” Roethlisberger said. “But I know ultimately leadership is about winning football games and leading your guys to victory. I know I can do that.”
Yes, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about winning football games, because that is what matters here, and the Steelers have a critical early season game Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks.
Can camaraderie and Kumbaya help in the pursuit of victory? Maybe. Maybe not. But this we know for sure: The opposing quarterbacks Sunday — Roethlisberger and Russell Wilson — have managed to do an awful lot of winning despite public criticism from teammates.
Wilson is ninth all-time in regular-season winning percentage at .674. Roethlisberger, who has played nearly twice as many games, is right behind him at .672.
They also are the two highest-paid players in the sport in terms of average salary — Wilson at $35 million, Roethlisberger at $34 million. And in terms of raw cash delivered this season, Roethlisberger leads the league at $45 million, according to spotrac.com.
This is Roethlisberger’s team, more than ever. To whom much is given, much is expected, and the Steelers have given Roethlisberger everything he wanted — his preferred coordinator, a huge contract, a new contract for Maurkice Pouncey and a ton of influence in the offense.
What matters is his performance, and it needs to be much better. Roethlisberger was terrible in the Week 1 loss to New England, and at his age, any bad performance sparks the question: Is he in decline?
Delusional Deion Sanders even has Ben retiring in the middle of the season.
I’m thinking this is a bounce-back week — Roethlisberger is 8-1 after losses of 20 or more points — but I’m as curious as anyone as to see how he fares without Brown. Nothing is guaranteed.
Consider the most recent time the Steelers lost by 20 or more. It was two years ago, a 30-9 home loss to Jacksonville. They won at Kansas City the next week, the record shows, but only after Brown turned a possible game-turning interception into a 51-yard touchdown in a 19-13 victory.
Hopefully, both Roethlisberger and coordinator Randy Fichtner remember that an effective running game makes everyone better. When this offense has been at its best in recent years, Roethlisberger is working off a stellar ground attack, though it’s also true that Seattle’s weakness is its secondary, as evidenced by Andy Dalton throwing for 418 yards last week.
What would really help is a victory. Nobody was talking about Ben’s bad leadership when the Steelers put 52 points on Carolina last season to move to 5-2-1. The leadership stuff tends to fade when the team wins.
If they start 0-2?
I don’t even wanna know.
Joe Starkey: jstarkey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @joestarkey1. Joe Starkey can be heard on the “Cook and Joe” show weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.