When Big Ben went through his farewell season in 2021, it appeared everything was going great. From the outside looking in, it appeared that Ben Roethlisberger had a nice sendoff in his final season. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
On Wednesday, Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette held a rookie minicamp chat to discuss numerous topics and was asked this question: “Is there bad blood between the Steelers and Big Ben with how his career ended. Was he ready to retire or was it a Troy [Polamalu] type situation where he was forced into it?”
Said Dulac: “I would say it’s very very safe to assume that.”
Roethlisberger spent his entire NFL career with the Steelers, but if is true that he was forced into retirement, the bad blood between them may not be ending anytime soon.
In his final season in Pittsburgh, the two-time Super Bowl champion averaged just 6.2 yards per attempt. His decline on the field was there. There was likely no other franchise that would’ve taken him as a starter, so he really had no choice but to hang it up.
Roethlisberger is fifth all time with 64,088 passing yards and eighth with 418 touchdown passes. Roethlisberger seemed to embody the city his played in and the fan base that immediately embraced him in 2004.
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He went 165-81-1 in the regular season while compiling the fifth-most regular-season wins in league history.
