It’s been five years since Ben Roethlisberger played for the Pittsburgh Steelers. But the Week 6 victory Aaron Rodgers led the Steelers to over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers looked an awful lot like a lot of wins Roethlisberger earned in the final year or so of his career.
The Steelers offense looked terrible for most of three quarters Sunday. But it came alive in the fourth quarter and did enough to win in overtime 26-19.
Rodgers finished the afternoon with 253 passing yards and two touchdowns.
The former Steelers quarterback reacted to the win during the latest episode of his podcast, “Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger,” on Tuesday night. While discussing the offense’s slow start, Roethlisberger threw out a lot of ideas on how the unit can get off to better starts.
The idea the former signal-caller suggested most strongly was giving Rodgers more control before the fourth quarter.
“I think they did better later in the game also when they started to change tempo … you naturally kind of have to do that when you’re down late in games. You kind of go into a 2-minute or an uptempo offense,” said Roethlisberger. “I’d like to maybe see that earlier.
“Aaron’s already doing everything he wants to do, anyway. Why not let him do his thing? Sometimes it makes it easier for o-linemen, too, because it makes the defense a lot more vanilla.”
Whether it was the uptempo pace or something else, something did start clicking for the Steelers in the fourth quarter. The offense scored 16 points on 86 yards in the fourth. Then, the Steelers had a 70-yard touchdown drive in overtime.
In the first three quarters, the Steelers only had 144 yards on offense. During that time, Rodgers had an interception and took five sacks.
Ben Roethlisberger Calls for Uptempo Offense for Aaron Rodgers
With “Big Ben,” the more Pittsburgh’s offense resembled something a fan might find on the playground, the better Roethlisberger typically played. That was definitely the case late in the quarterback’s career in 2020 and 2021.
Rodgers hasn’t played off script quite as much as “Big Ben” in his career. When Rodgers could run, he would scramble a lot, but he’s obviously not as quick as he used to be now 42 years old.
There’s no denying, though, the quicker pace for the Steelers offense appeared to help late versus the Buccaneers. Rodgers didn’t use the term “uptempo” to reporters after the win, but the quarterback gave credit to the quicker pace when he discussed the comeback Sunday evening.
“We sputtered along there for a little bit, and then we kind of opened things up with some quicker stuff, on-the-ball stuff,” Rodgers told the media Sunday. “Felt like we got into a rhythm there.
“Especially in the first half, and then we kind of went away from it in the third quarter, kind of went back to it in the fourth quarter, and moved the ball pretty efficiently at that point.”
Throughout talking about the Steelers first-half offensive woes, Roethlisberger stressed the lack of rhythm. At the end of the day, Roethlisberger argued in favor of any change that will help the offense get into “rhythm” sooner.
Whether that’s an “uptempo” style or something else, the Steelers would be wise to make adjustments to their first-half offense.
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