Ben Roethlisberger crawled to the finish line
I know we were all hoping for a better ending to Ben Roethlisberger’s career than this. The 18-year quarterback for the Steelers has had such a remarkable NFL career but it’s so clear that he’s not a fraction of the player he used to be. Nobody should even be questioning at this point that it’s time to hang it up.
In his final NFL game, Big Ben finished with a stat line of 29/44, 215 passing yards, 4.9 yards per attempt, 2 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, and a 15.0 QBR, according to ESPN. However, his performance was actually much worse than these numbers suggest. The Steelers didn’t score their first offensive points until the third quarter, and Roethlisberger averaged just 1.7 yards per attempt in the first half.
Because the game was so out of reach, the Chiefs ultimately loosened the ropes with some prevent defense, and Ben was able to get some garbage-time stats with a 28-point deficit in the second half. Nobody should use his raw numbers to convince themselves that Roethlisberger had a solid performance in his final game. It simply was anything but.
Ben was sporadic with the football and multiple passes hit Chiefs defenders in the hands. He was also dreadful when looking to pass down the field. We were glad he got to make a playoff appearance one more time, but this is a game we would love to scratch from our memories.