4 takeaways from Steelers ugly loss vs. Bills in Week 14
By Tommy Jaggi
Ben Roethlisberger may not be good enough to win a Super Bowl
Please don’t confuse what I am trying to say here. Even amidst his struggles, Ben Roethlisberger is a significant step up from Mason Rudolph and Devlin Hodges from a season ago. However, as poorly as he has played in recent weeks, it’s getting to the point where we must question if a 38-year-old Roethlisberger is capable of leading this team to a Super Bowl.
Ben seems to have gotten worse as the season has gone on, and his performance against the Bills was arguably the worst of his career. On Sunday Night Football, he completed just 21 of 37 passes for a dismal 187 yards (5.1 yards per attempt) for 2 touchdowns to go with 2 interceptions and a 65.9 passer rating, according to ESPN. Going into this game, it wasn’t like the Bills even had a top-tier defense. In fact, their secondary has been pretty suspect for most of the season.
While there is certainly more that factors into this offense than just the lackluster play of Big Ben, Roethlisberger needs to take the blame for some of these struggles. He missed a few routine throws pretty badly, and the short passing game was not a consistent way of moving the chains. When he was asked to throw the ball down the field, he was way off the mark. Ben needs to improve, and he needs to do it fast; otherwise, this team will have very little shot at a Super Bowl in 2020.