polamalubeast
09-24-2015, 06:31 AM
Ben Roethlisberger is playing the best football of his oddly underrated career. The Steelers' offense has racked up more yards than any team in the league despite missing Le'Veon Bell, Martavis Bryant and Maurkice Pouncey. What are they going to look like when everyone is healthy?
Roethlisberger has hit another level by going downfield more than ever. Too often overlooked throughout his career when discussing the top quarterbacks in the league, he now looks to be comfortably in the top three. The pieces are in place for him to have a late-career MVP run that looked unlikely when Todd Haley took over the Steelers' offense in 2012.
Last Sunday's performance against the 49ers was one of the best games I've seen in three years of writing this column. He completed twice as many impressive vertical passes (six) as he had off-target throws (three). His style of play has always been built around aggression. But now Roethlisberger doesn't need to improvise after the snap because he's irrationally good at simply dropping back and heaving it down the field.
Roethlisberger is the best deep ball thrower in the league. Through two weeks, he's completed 10 passes that traveled at least 20 yards in the air. That's double the total of any other quarterback. It's insane that the six plays below happened in the same game, one in which he only threw 27 passes.
There's no longer any questions about Roethlisberger's place among quarterback royalty. The Big Three in September 2015 consists of Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady and Big Ben.
This is the Quarterback Index. After four weeks, we'll rank the quarterbacks solely based on this year's play. While collecting evidence in the meantime, the rankings below are based on one question: What QB would you want running your team for the rest of the season?
read more
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000537625/article/qb-index-ben-joins-big-three-at-qb?campaign=Twitter_atn
Roethlisberger has hit another level by going downfield more than ever. Too often overlooked throughout his career when discussing the top quarterbacks in the league, he now looks to be comfortably in the top three. The pieces are in place for him to have a late-career MVP run that looked unlikely when Todd Haley took over the Steelers' offense in 2012.
Last Sunday's performance against the 49ers was one of the best games I've seen in three years of writing this column. He completed twice as many impressive vertical passes (six) as he had off-target throws (three). His style of play has always been built around aggression. But now Roethlisberger doesn't need to improvise after the snap because he's irrationally good at simply dropping back and heaving it down the field.
Roethlisberger is the best deep ball thrower in the league. Through two weeks, he's completed 10 passes that traveled at least 20 yards in the air. That's double the total of any other quarterback. It's insane that the six plays below happened in the same game, one in which he only threw 27 passes.
There's no longer any questions about Roethlisberger's place among quarterback royalty. The Big Three in September 2015 consists of Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady and Big Ben.
This is the Quarterback Index. After four weeks, we'll rank the quarterbacks solely based on this year's play. While collecting evidence in the meantime, the rankings below are based on one question: What QB would you want running your team for the rest of the season?
read more
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000537625/article/qb-index-ben-joins-big-three-at-qb?campaign=Twitter_atn