Unleash Big Ben
How do you unleash Ben Roethlisberger? Simple, steal a page from Marv Levy’s playbook. In the ‘90s, Jim Kelly had the K Gun, which was novel and was darn near unstoppable. Well, at least until they got to the Superbowl. Then again, Ben Roethlisberger is no Jim Kelly.
Fans have argued for years to allow Roethlisberger to run the no-huddle offense. Why? Well, when he does, he makes big things happen. Let’s look at what happens when Roethlisberger runs the No Huddle. In the first game against Baltimore, this season the Steelers had 0 points and 64 yards. Big Ben went 4-10 for 24 yards. In the second half, he went 17-22, threw for 157 yards, and scored three touchdowns. Of the 13 no-huddle plays in the second half, 18 plays gained 97 yards, four of which exceeded ten yards or more. The Steelers ran a no-huddle with a spread formation. When asked about it, Roethlisberger himself said, “90 percent was made up as we went.”
Go back to the 2013 and 2014 seasons. Training camp in 2014, the Steelers talked about running the no-huddle more often. Why? In 2013 when they ran it the Steelers went 6-3 and averaged 10 points per game than the first seven games that they did not run it. So obviously, the Steelers have known for a while Ben Roethlisberger excels in a no-huddle offense. In 2020 alone, 62 plays run in the no-huddle have netted the Steelers a completion, thirty-two no-huddle plays resulted in a first down, and four have scored a touchdown. Looking at the reverse, only 16 No Huddle plays have resulted in an incompletion, that’s the 17th best in the league. They have not thrown an interception while running the no-huddle in 2020, and Roethlisberger has only been sacked twice. Go back to 2018, and the Steelers led the league in completions and first downs running the no-huddle, and they ranked 2nd in touchdowns with six. The short of it the Steelers are successful when running the no-huddle
Big Ben is a 17-year veteran; he has been around. He instinctively knows which plays will work and which ones won’t. Only a handful of quarterbacks have the experience to call plays as they see fit and Roethlisberger is one of those quarterbacks. To add to the benefits of the no-huddle, it does not allow the defense to make a substitution or change its packages. Roethlisberger will have the defense in a favorable matchup and catch them flat-footed.
Also, if you have no running game, then switching to a no-huddle helps neutralize your lack of a running game. How? It’s quite simple. The defense can not make the substitutions it needs due to the fact the Steelers are running a no-huddle. Running plays that might ordinarily get stuffed if the defense had the opportunity to make the proper substitution perhaps nets you 5-8 yards instead.
In Buffalo, they called it the K Gun. Well, in Pittsburgh call it the BB gun, and let Roethlisberger dissect teams using it. There are very few things you can claim to be the best at in the NFL; however, Ben Rothlisberger running the no-huddle is one of them. Plain and simple, it works.
The Washington game exposed the Steelers’ problems that do exist. If anything else, the loss showed they were not a great team, but that they are a good team playing at an exceptional level all season. Ok, so they are 11-1. It’s not a disaster; they are still the number one seed. None of that has changed. Sure the Steelers lose out on the chance to be the only team since the ’72 Dolphins to go undefeated. Sure, there are some things the Steelers could do which could help them. Will the Steelers do them? Probably not. The Steelers are heading into a rebuilding phase in 2021, given they will lose a few players. So Pittsburgh doesn’t want 2020 to be the season fans talk about for the next decade that they say they could have won if they had only done this or that!
That still does not mean they won’t or can’t win the Superbowl. No! The Steelers are as talented as any other team in the NFL. Even if they choose to stay the course and make no additional changes going forward, they can still win. At least they know their weak spots, and so does the rest of the NFL. It’s up to the Steelers to make the adjustments necessary to ensure they limit their imperfections to only one loss this season. Can they do that? Yes. Will they? Now that’s the $64,000 question.