The Steelers signed Steven Nelson, Mark Barron and Donte Moncrief as free agents. They drafted nine players, including Michigan inside linebacker Devin Bush, who comes to town as the most anticipated rookie in years. They said goodbye – good riddance, actually – to Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell.
It will be a much different team that reports to training camp this summer.
There is just one primary constant, the one player who always gives the Steelers their best chance to win another Super Bowl:
Ben Roethlisberger.
“I hope [he plays] forever,” Mike Tomlin told ESPN last weekend. “We like the big guy.”
The Steelers put their money where their heart is with Roethlisberger late last month, giving him a two-year, $68 million contract extension that will take him through the 2021 season when he will be 39. Clearly, they weren’t turned off by the nonsensical and, in some cases, borderline slanderous “noise” – Tomlin’s word – that surrounded Roethlisberger since last season ended with one of the worst collapses in franchise history.
Brown, on his way out the door to a better contract with the Oakland Raiders, said Roethlisberger has an “owner’s mentality, like he can call out anybody including coaches.” Hines Ward and Jerome Bettis said Roethlisberger needs to work harder to be a better teammate. But that was nothing compared to what a couple of other former teammates spewed. Josh Harris alleged Roethlisberger fumbled intentionally in a game against Cincinnati in 2014. Rashard Mendenhall called Roethlisberger a racist.
“It never changed in our minds who he was, what he could do, who he is,” Kevin Colbert said last week, his first significant public comments since the Roethlisberger extension was announced. “We had no hesitation in keeping him in the mix. This guy is a Hall of Fame quarterback. We’ve been very fortunate to have Ben for as long as we have. He still can play at a high level. To get him for three more years collectively, that’s exciting for us.”
That wasn’t the first time Colbert stood tall behind Roethlisberger. In February, he made national news by saying Roethlisberger has “52 kids under him, quite honestly.” It was a horrible choice of words and Colbert was widely criticized. He attempted to clarify a few days later on NFL Network.
“What I am referencing is Ben is the only player [on the roster] who has ever won a Super Bowl with the Pittsburgh Steelers,” he said. “I was referencing the younger players on our team and their lack of experience in the Super Bowl-winning environment. Ben is the only who can say he’s done that …
“If our players were smart, they’d listen to him because he’s been there, he’s done it. He can tell them, ‘No, guys, what you’re doing is or is not good enough to do this.’ I have no problem with him. He can call me out, and that’s fine. What he does, I totally respect.”
Roethlisberger has not spoken publicly about his contract extension or his tumultuous offseason. My guess is he will allow his play to do most of his talking. He is as competitive as any athlete I’ve seen in Pittsburgh and always is motivated to try to collect championships. But I expect him to be even more driven this season to prove the Steelers can win with a rebuilt roster, especially without Brown, whom he often protected when Brown lost focus when he didn’t think he was getting the ball enough and ran the wrong patterns.
“You know him,” Tomlin said of Roethlisberger during the NFL owners meetings in March. “You don’t do what he has done at the level that he has done it for the time in which he’s done it without responding appropriately to challenges and adversity. That’s just in his DNA.”
“The challenge for us is to build around him,” Colbert said. “I give New England credit because they’ve taken what they’ve had in a great quarterback and they built that team around him twice and, obviously, gotten wonderful results. That’s our challenge, to keep a good team around a great quarterback because a great quarterback is always the focus of any successful organization.”
The Steelers will play at New England on Sept. 8 in their first game.
I already can’t wait.
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Ron Cook: rcook@post-gazette.com and Twitter@RonCookPG. Ron Cook can be heard on the “Cook and Joe” show weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.
First Published: May 3, 2019, 12:00 p.m.