So you're saying he'll be an interesting addition to the Pats roster in a few years?
2017 Steelers: MyFace Champions
- Thread starter tims4wins
- Start date
- Status
I could be wrong, and obviously he's had some injuries, but I feel like with Bell's running style he doesn't get hit as hard as other runners every play. He just reminds me of a boxer like Floyd who's always catching punches off his forearms or shoulder or the sides of his face. Obviously, he's getting tackled, but he doesn't seem to get stuck that often.
No matter how much a shell of himself James Harrison definitely is, he would instantly step in and be our top pass rusher, at worst our second best. Sign him.
As an expatriate Bostonian that has lived in PA for 20 years (both in Pittsburgh and Philly) nothing would make me happier than listening to my Stiller fan friends crying about this.
Per Schefter Brown would miss the WC game if the Steelers don’t clinch a bye. Not that I would expect it to matter
I'll be stunned if he is anywhere close to 100% for the divisional round either.
I’d be surprised if he doesn’t hurt himself worse if he forces himself through the game. That’s not really an injury you want to be playing with, and I could easily see him tearing it worse, popping an achilles, or messing up his other leg by putting too much weight on it.
Giggity.
Saw this: https://247sports.com/nfl/new-england-patriots/Bolt/New-England-Patriots-Baltimore-Ravens-want-James-Harrison-112710836
Of course, this clears him to return to the Steelers as well. Probably hear something tomorrow.
So, um, Todd Haley seems to have “shattered his hip” in a New Year’s Eve “incident”.
“As I scanned local talk radio, you got the usual hot takes on what was alleged to have happened. One radio show took a call from a guy who claimed to be there, telling a tale of how Haley’s wife ‘got into it’ with no less than three males at the scene, hitting each of them before the cops supposedly cuffed her.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/platform/amp/pittsburgh-steelers-opinions-reactions-news-updates/2018/1/4/16843028/steelers-three-ring-circus-concludes-with-todd-haleys-new-years-eve-incident-nfl-news-rumors
“As I scanned local talk radio, you got the usual hot takes on what was alleged to have happened. One radio show took a call from a guy who claimed to be there, telling a tale of how Haley’s wife ‘got into it’ with no less than three males at the scene, hitting each of them before the cops supposedly cuffed her.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/platform/amp/pittsburgh-steelers-opinions-reactions-news-updates/2018/1/4/16843028/steelers-three-ring-circus-concludes-with-todd-haleys-new-years-eve-incident-nfl-news-rumors
Deadspin Report: Ryan Shazier has feeling in his legs
This is really great to hear, even if unconfirmed by the family.
Looking at those stats for playoff experience among division-round QBs, we all know that Brady and Brees have a ton of playoff games under their belt, but 20 for Big Ben is a considerable number.
You know, were it not for Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger might be viewed as one of the greatest or even The Greatest QB in NFL History, given how frequently he's played for top teams that were legitimate SB contenders. They probably win the title in 2004, maybe in 2016, probably get a better seed in 2007 and 2015, and certainly don't have any readily-available kryptonite that you could point to as a career criticism. And yeah they lost the SB to Green Bay in 2010, but their starting LT Max Starks went down on season-ending IR in the Pats game that year, and getting the #1 seed instead of the #2 certainly would have helped avoid a rough BAL team in the AFC playoffs. Who knows how that might have worked out.
Watching him, I know few Pats fans think of Big Ben as any sort of miracle-worker as a QB (very reliable, very good, great at avoiding sacks / extending plays). He's been a top-5 QB in the league his entire career, a HOFer but not exactly pantheon-level. But because of the annual quality of his team, he'd be in the running for all the superlatives that Tom Brady has been showered with lately, were it not for Tom Brady himself.
Kinda crazy to think about.
You know, were it not for Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger might be viewed as one of the greatest or even The Greatest QB in NFL History, given how frequently he's played for top teams that were legitimate SB contenders. They probably win the title in 2004, maybe in 2016, probably get a better seed in 2007 and 2015, and certainly don't have any readily-available kryptonite that you could point to as a career criticism. And yeah they lost the SB to Green Bay in 2010, but their starting LT Max Starks went down on season-ending IR in the Pats game that year, and getting the #1 seed instead of the #2 certainly would have helped avoid a rough BAL team in the AFC playoffs. Who knows how that might have worked out.
Watching him, I know few Pats fans think of Big Ben as any sort of miracle-worker as a QB (very reliable, very good, great at avoiding sacks / extending plays). He's been a top-5 QB in the league his entire career, a HOFer but not exactly pantheon-level. But because of the annual quality of his team, he'd be in the running for all the superlatives that Tom Brady has been showered with lately, were it not for Tom Brady himself.
Kinda crazy to think about.
I'm always amazed to learn just how many QBs there are in the NFL's top 5.
Ben hasn't been among the top five in passer rating since 2010, when he was fifth. In those same seven years, he cracked the top 5 in DVOA only in 2014 and 2015. It's a reach to say he's better than Brady, Manning, Rodgers, Brees, or Rivers. His career overlapped with Favre; there were years where you could argue any number of QBs - Romo, Wilson, Newton, Ryan pushed him farther down the list.
He's a HOFer, but I would disagree that he's been a Top 5 QB his entire career, or even most of it.
I had to go back and pull the numbers, because the 'Ben is a top QB' thing gets me every time. If not for Brady he might have won an extra SB or two on the strength of a very strong supporting cast, but the bolded statement above just isn't true at all by any measure of QB play that I've seen.
I just went and grabbed Ben's ranks in 4 stats for every year, Rating, QBR, Yds/Gm, TDs, just to do some level-setting. Here are his average annual ranks for those:
Rating: 9.2
QBR: 9.3
Yds/Gm: 9.4
TDs: 11.3
Out of 54 'stat-seasons' (14 years times 4 stats, - 2 years before QBR was tracked) he was in the top five for any of them just 14 times, and has only ever led the league in Yds/Gm (in 2014/15). His average composite rank (so, averaging ranks for all four stats per year) is 9.99, basically meaning that he has barely been a top-10 QB during his career. His BEST year his avg. rank was 4.5, so you could argue that he was never even once the top QB in the league.
Screw potential best ever, he is borderline not even that great in his generation. Brady, Peyton, Brees, Romo, Rodgers, and potentially even Ryan and Rivers were comfortably better than Ben. He's closer to Eli Manning (a mediocre QB whose best ability was to gather counting stats by staying healthy with a very good supporting cast and stable organization) than he is to a top-5 QB.
Depends on which statistics you prefer, and how much people are relying on the eye test. Other than Brady, Rodgers (post-2007) and Manning (until 2014), I don't think there have been very many slam-dunks for QBs that most people would prefer over Ben. He's been ludicrously durable, for one thing. He's also been tasked with less of the total offense than some of the other peers you mention, so if anything he's the opposite of a counting-stat fluke. Career INT% (2.7) is tied with that of Romo, just behind Rivers (2.6) and way lower than Eli Manning (3.1).
If you'd taken an annual poll for which QB people would want if they were drafting a team, other than the three inner-circle HOFers, Ben would probably win over Matt Ryan, Rivers, and probably even Brees and Romo some of the years of his career. Maybe he's not #4 year-in-and-year-out, but he's in the 4-to-7 range most years.
If you want to call him "top 7 or 8", I don't think it changes my point, which was that (1) on an average team, Ben is probably in the Hall of the Very Good, but (2) take away the Brady roadblock and he may very well have been regarded as an all-time great. That's quite a swing.
If you'd taken an annual poll for which QB people would want if they were drafting a team, other than the three inner-circle HOFers, Ben would probably win over Matt Ryan, Rivers, and probably even Brees and Romo some of the years of his career. Maybe he's not #4 year-in-and-year-out, but he's in the 4-to-7 range most years.
If you want to call him "top 7 or 8", I don't think it changes my point, which was that (1) on an average team, Ben is probably in the Hall of the Very Good, but (2) take away the Brady roadblock and he may very well have been regarded as an all-time great. That's quite a swing.
You talk about a Brady roadblock, but he has only lost to Brady twice in the playoffs - his rookie year (2004) and last year. The Steelers last made the Super Bowl in the 2010 season; someone other than the Pats ended their season in 2011-2015.
I did. I found the idea that if Tom Brady didn't play for the Patriots, the Steelers might have won the games they played against the Patriots, and got a slightly better seed, and then not lost to Jacksonville and Denver, and maybe won the Super Bowl not particularly worthy of comment.
Not only because it's rank speculation-fantasy, but also because if you're retconning no Tom Brady, and a worse Patriots team, the Steelers wouldn't have been playing the Patriots in those games, they'd be playing a different first place team.
He's not Terry Bradshaw, but Ben wouldn't be anywhere near the GOAT no matter how many Super Bowls he won. People are pulling the numbers, but beyond that, he's had a murderers row of receivers and good to great backs for almost his entire career. This argument doesn't pass the smell test, the sight test or the stats test.
Brown is running full routes with Ochocinco. Looks like he’s moving incredibly well, which is shocking if he actually had a calf tear.
My hunch is it was something much less severe, because you don’t receiver from actual calf tears that quickly. Not even close, actually. He’s running full routes, cutting, flying down field, etc. There’s literally no way unless the Steelers exaggerated the scope of the injury.
He’ll be back for the AFCCG and probably at full speed.
My hunch is it was something much less severe, because you don’t receiver from actual calf tears that quickly. Not even close, actually. He’s running full routes, cutting, flying down field, etc. There’s literally no way unless the Steelers exaggerated the scope of the injury.
He’ll be back for the AFCCG and probably at full speed.
Ben's lack of durability has also hurt him. Even including this year where he just sat out the last game because of rest, he's only played a full season four times.
I went back to pull DYAR and DVOA as well, and they don't change anything, he is on average around 9th in the league for both over his career, and adding them into the annual average still puts him around 10th best QB every year. You can't say that he's incredibly durable and acknowledge that he is on a better than average team, while also saying he isn't a counting stat fluke, since those are literally the two things that help you put up counting stats. Also, if the stat that you are pulling to argue against the stats I used (Int%) puts him in the Romo/Rivers category, then I would say that just proves my point.
Ben is good, and durable, but that's about it, and that doesn't get you anywhere near the GOAT, whether or not you remove Brady from the universe. If you have to argue to make a case that a guy is in the bottom half of the top ten QBs most of his seasons, that would seem to shut the door on the idea. For reference, Ben's BEST season by QBR is ranked 32nd all time. Brady has SEVEN seasons better than Ben's best. Brees has 3, Peyton has 6, Rodgers has 2, Romo has 2, MATT SCHAUB has 2.
And Jacksonville in 2007. Then again, they would have also played if the Patriots hadn't lost to Mark Sanchez in 2010. (And Jake Plummer in 2005).
Good post, I'm persuaded that "top-5" was an overstatement. I've seen that term bandied about for him a number of times in BBTL, and maybe nobody's taken a critical look at it.
My core point was:
- Without Brady, Ben probably wins at least 3 SBs, maybe 4, in his career (which may have some life to it still). He'd have almost certainly had two more cracks at the Super Bowl, and some other lower-percentage re-rolls of season outcome as well.
- The list of QBs with 3 or more NFL titles is a list of all-time greats. Brady, Starr, Montana, Bradshaw, Luckman, Unitas, Graham, Aikman (?), Dawson. Those with 2 are still a list of HOFers: Elway, Staubach, P. Manning, Eli (sigh), Starr, Griese, Plunkett (not a HOFer), and Roethlisberger - depending on how many of the pre-merger guys you put on the list. You're still missing some big names (Marino, Young, Favre - to say nothing of Brees or Rodgers), but it's decently correlated with the fuller list of all-time greats.
- In the debate about all-time greats, in any position or sport, the conversation (at least water-cooler-grade conversations) starts with titles. It doesn't end there, and shouldn't, but it's a major factor in everyone's mind fairly or not.
- Take Ben from the 2-titles list and put him into the 3-or-more list, and the conversation around his status in the pantheon changes considerably - even if a dispassionate observer of his talent level wouldn't put him there on individual skills alone.
You're still being shifty. Your point was Ben might've been considered the GOAT, now you're saying he'd be in the company of guys like Bradshaw, Aikman and Dawson. I don't think anyone has any of those guys as top ten all time. Some of the others are too rooted in a different era to compare, but only Brady and Montana from that list are ever mentioned as a top 5 all time quarterback.
Good, that way we don't have to hear that particular excuse after the AFCCG.
If Ted Williams hadn’t gone off to any wars, he might have broken Babe Ruth’s home run record. If he’d gotten traded to the Yankees in 1947 (strong rumors) and played out his career as he did through 1960, he would have demolished it.
I certainly won't dispute the fact that people throw around the idea of Ben as a top-tier QB, which is exactly why I reacted so strongly to your initial post. It's just never sat right with me, and called to mind the debate about Eli's HoF credentials. I also won't dispute that winning 2-3 Super Bowls certainly gets you into a discussion about all-time greats, but as you said the conversation doesn't end with titles, and I think that once you look past those, Ben isn't particularly close to some of the other names you mentioned.
Certainly, 'winning more Superbowls would make people think more highly of a QB' isn't a controversial statement, but at that point I'm not sure that (as you pointed out) Peyton wouldn't be the greater beneficiary of a world without Brady. Or would Brady benefit he most from a world without Eli, even though no one thinks that Eli was amazing? Once you go down that road, I feel like you have to see if Ben is the guy who has been hurt most by other great QBs playing at the same time as him. Maybe by seeing what QBs in recent history have been beaten by the same person in conference championship games?
OK jerks, I'm calling my own number here and determining who would have won every Pats SB if the B/B dynasty never happened.
2001: The Rams were ridiculous and I think they would have beaten anyone else. Everyone knows "Greatest Show on Turf" but the D was just as good.
2003: The Colts win the AFC and beat the upstart Panthers, who were really just a good team that got hot at the right time.
2004: The Steelers win the AFC and beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl, because the Eagles were still coached by Andy Reid.
2007: No change. The Chargers probably win the AFC but Rivers on a busted leg would have had a tough time with the NYG pass rush.
2011: The Ravens beat the Giants in the SB, as the Pats would have if Gronk hadn't been dinged up.
2014: Seahawks easily stomp the Colts, as the Patriots did.
2016: Good matchup between the Falcons and Steelers, but I think Atlanta takes it, especially if LeVeon Bell is still out.
So, we have Warner now with two rings, Peyton with three, Roethlisberger with three, Flacco(!) with two (and Eli only one), and Wilson with two. Pretty big shift. Good thing none of it happened.
2001: The Rams were ridiculous and I think they would have beaten anyone else. Everyone knows "Greatest Show on Turf" but the D was just as good.
2003: The Colts win the AFC and beat the upstart Panthers, who were really just a good team that got hot at the right time.
2004: The Steelers win the AFC and beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl, because the Eagles were still coached by Andy Reid.
2007: No change. The Chargers probably win the AFC but Rivers on a busted leg would have had a tough time with the NYG pass rush.
2011: The Ravens beat the Giants in the SB, as the Pats would have if Gronk hadn't been dinged up.
2014: Seahawks easily stomp the Colts, as the Patriots did.
2016: Good matchup between the Falcons and Steelers, but I think Atlanta takes it, especially if LeVeon Bell is still out.
So, we have Warner now with two rings, Peyton with three, Roethlisberger with three, Flacco(!) with two (and Eli only one), and Wilson with two. Pretty big shift. Good thing none of it happened.
Sure. Bradshaw and Aikman are perfectly good comparisons, although they of course were pre salary cap (other than 1995). I bet Troy Aikman is still the #1-owned jersey for the #1-biggest NFL fan population. I still hear idiots proclaim that Bradshaw and Montana were better than Brady because "they never lost a Super Bowl", and of course heard it a lot more frequently up until about a year ago. I don't think any amount of minor counterfactual would have changed Ben's talent level to that of a truly top-10-all-time QB. But among casual sports fans, he'd be regarded as among the best, for generations (and amplified by the fact that he plays for one of the NFL's most popular and mythologized franchises). He'd have a statue out there at Heinz field, probably on a motorcycle
I just think the gulf between how he's rated, and how he would have been rated were it not for Tom Brady, is enormous.
Now, if we take Super Nomario's scenario, maybe it's Warner and (depending on the future course of his career) Wilson whose reputations are the most influenced. I don't think a third ring for Peyton would change much. For Flacco, #2 might be the difference between HOF and not, perhaps that's such a huge binary distinction that it takes the crown. But Roethlisberger would see a huge jump in esteem, I'd wager.
(another related question might be, how would a Bledsoe-led Pats team have fared under Belichick from 2001-2004? Would he have beaten Kordell Stewart, nevermind Kurt Warner? Would players like Ted Washington and Corey Dillon been cap casualties of Bledsoe's contract?)
I mean, now you're talking about your guesses about Cowboy's fans jersey choices and what idiots argue? Mayyyybe time to let this one go, champ.
Already looking ahead to the Patriots re-match. Which I get. You need confidence, but maybe don't broadcast it until it actually happens.
Will this team just shut up already. I hope Jacksonville punches them in the face for over looking them.
My first instinct is always to urge some Steelers openmindedness if not love. I’m old enough to know they were the Pats before the Pats beginning with Chuck Noll. Even more so, because before Noll they were the losingest losers ever, and not particularly lovable, instead pitiable.
But motherfuck, they live to yap. And they double down on the yapping even in the aftermath of more than a few Anthony Smith style humiliations.
I don’t understand it, and I don’t Chuck Noll would understand it. They are so far removed from the 1970s, when the likes of Joe Greene and Jack Lambert had to announce to the world — this shit (not so lovable losers) ends here and now.
Steelers CB Artie Burns left practice after suffering a non-contact right knee injury, confirmed to @TheAthleticPIT by both Mike Hilton and Cam Sutton. Burns wasn't in the locker room following practice. Sutton would start if Burns can't go on Sunday.
- Status