The Pittsburgh Steelers are set to undergo massive change this offseason, and while the first order of business is settling on a new head coach, eventually he and general manager Omar Khan will have to find a new quarterback.
With Aaron Rodgers unlikely to return and Khan having a solid stash of picks, there’s some expectation that Pittsburgh will look to draft a quarterback in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft, held in the Steel City this April.
Ben Roethlisberger, however, cautioned against that idea on his podcast, Footbahlin, on Wednesday.
Ben Roethlisberger outlines the blueprint he believes the Pittsburgh Steelers should follow
"I would not draft a quarterback for at least two to three years. That's just my opinion,” Roethlisberger said. “The issue that I see with a lot of teams is they get a quarterback, and they try and build around that quarterback. I think it should be the other way around. I think you should build a team and put your quarterback in it.”
Roethlisberger even argued that if Rodgers doesn’t come back, he would rather continue building the roster out while giving Will Howard a shot under center next season, while signing a veteran such as Marcus Mariota or Carson Wentz to help him grow as a professional.
“It happened to me. They had a great football team. They plugged me in. We had a veteran group. It just works," he said. "It works better than trying to grab a quarterback and be, ‘okay, we're gonna build around this quarterback,’ because then it's gonna take you four or five years to build around that quarterback.
He's probably gonna look like poo up to it and then you're like, ‘is he really our guy? is he not our guy?’"
To Big Ben’s point, it also worked with Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, and Jordan Love. While some quarterbacks over the years have been able to join young, rebuilding rosters and find success, there are plenty who have fallen into the bust category because they simply lacked help around them on the field.
Of course, when we start talking about how great Rodgers and Mahomes were set up well early in their careers, finding the right bridge quarterback is the hardest part. Pittsburgh failed at that with Mitchell Trubisky and Kenny Pickett just a few years ago.
Still, if the Steelers aren’t blown away with Ty Simpson enough to trade up for him, there’s nowhere else to look in the first round at the position. There are plenty of second-to-fourth round guys, but it’s not as though quarterbacks drafted in those rounds have a strong track record themselves.
There aren’t enough quarterbacks to go around in the NFL, as the Steelers know well enough. Still, the next head coach probably shouldn’t begin his first season with a sixth-round, second-year quarterback under center as Roethlisberger suggested.
Regardless, his point about fleshing out the roster before dropping a cheap, young quarterback into it stands as some wisdom more teams around the league should practice, including the Steelers if they can manage it. Pittsburgh has many pieces in place on both sides of the ball, but they still have some room to grow as well.
Nonetheless, the Steelers need a new quarterback, and whoever that ends up being will need to be just as ready as the new head coach to hit the ground running in their first season in Pittsburgh.