Not all the Steelers problems can be blamed on Ben Roethlisberger

Coaching

Finally, if nothing else, there is a coaching issue. Well, at least in terms of they handled one or more situations in the Bengals game. The play in question is the 4th and ten situations with 3:09 left in the fourth quarter. Down 24-10, they run a poorly designed screen pass to Najee Harris, losing a yard. Thus,  leading some to speculate, including Bengals player Tyler Boyd, the Steelers essentially forfeited.

Deciding they couldn’t win and surrendered the ball instead of trying. What was the point of running the play? If they fail, the game is over. Had they got to the one, they could have gotten the first down, at least. Sometimes a screenplay works, not in a situation where the play must succeed to have any shot at winning the game. Whatever Tomlin or even Matt Canada, for that matter, was thinking we may never know. Yet, it is not an example of great coaching. This is by far the worst example of poor coaching one can find.

When a team is on a slide, such as the Steelers, the quarterback tends to be a lightning rod and takes a share of the blame for everything going wrong. Ben is that type of player. However, in this case, for anything, Ben has done or failed to do pales in comparison to the other issues with the Steelers he can not control.

So yes, you can blame Ben for poor passes or not reading the defensive alignment, but there are many problems on the Steelers team he has no control over.