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PITTSBURGH 38, HOUSTON 17 – Big Ben rolls on
Ben Roethlisberger provides us a textbook example of a quarterback who plays brilliantly efficient football, but does so in a world of gridiron analysis dominated by those fans and pigskin "pundits" who go ga-ga only over big (but rarely important) volume numbers.
Ben Ben has been widely praised as an elite NFL quarterback by the Cold, Hard Football Facts, even as many fans and “pundits” continue to label him as a system quarterback.
Well, Roethlisberger is a “system” quarterback who's laughing all the way to the Hall of Fame. He already boasts one Super Bowl ring and, with 50 more pass attempts, he'll find himself (officially) among the all-time leaderboard in two of the most important passing stats. (Official NFL records require a mininum 1,500 pass attempts; Roethlisberger has 1,450 after Sunday).
In Pittsburgh’s blowout of Houston, Roethlisberger completed 13 of 14 passes (92.9%) for 137 yards, 9.79 YPA, 2 TD, 0 INT and a 147.0 passer rating.
His career passer rating as of today is 93.2, which puts him in a battle with Kurt Warner for the third-best rating in history. Given the way Peyton Manning and the Colts performed Sunday, Roethlisberger might even leap past him, into the No. 2 spot all time, behind only Steve Young. (Manning's career passer rating is 94.6, just 1.4 points better than Big Ben's).
Roethlisberger also averages 8.145 yards per attempt for his career, as of today. That’s the single best average per attempt of any quarterback who’s played since 1960. There’s a chance that Roethlisberger this year could surpass Hall of Famer Norm Van Brocklin (8.16 YPA) for the No. 3 spot in the entire history of the league.
Big Ben’s critics will cite the small number of attempts and the fact that Pittsburgh remains a run-first team. But there have been a lot of run-first teams in history that couldn’t win because they couldn’t get production out of the quarterback position.
Whether they run often or run well, or whether they do neither, the Steelers will remain a formidable threat as long as they have Roethlisberger – and his historic, even record-setting production.
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