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Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is sacked hard to the M&T Bank Stadium turf by the Ravens' Bart Scott in 2006.
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NFL Preview: Roethlisberger has sustained decade of hits

Peter Diana/Post-Gazette

NFL Preview: Roethlisberger has sustained decade of hits

For an NFL quarterback like Ben Roethlisberger, the idiom ‘crunching the numbers’ can often be equated with a health score, particularly when you’ve been hit, sacked and pounded on for more than a decade. With Roethlisberger about to make his 143rd NFL start in his 11th NFL season, we take stock of the toll a decade at the position has taken.

Quarterbacks are a nostalgic bunch. They tend to remember the most vicious hits they’ve absorbed in the pocket the way teenagers remember their first kiss. With a lot less fondness, of course.

Ben Roethlisberger, who has been sacked more times than any active quarterback in the NFL, doesn’t even hesitate to name the player who slammed the hardest into his 6-foot-5, 250-pound frame.

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“Bart Scott,” he said, referring to the former Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker.

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Former Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Ken Anderson was sacked 398 times in his 16-year NFL career — an average of nearly 25 times a season — but one hit stands out above the others.

“Mike Wagner,” Anderson said, referring to the Steelers safety from the four Super Bowl teams of the 1970s. “I didn’t see him coming, and he put his helmet right in the middle of my back.”

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Former Oakland Raiders quarterback Jim Plunkett was hit so many times from his blind side that his left shoulder — not his throwing shoulder — had to be repaired several times after his 16-year career was over. But one hit in particular did the most damage, even though he doesn’t remember the player.

“I got sacked by a guy from the 49ers and dislocated my shoulder,” Plunkett said. “It wasn’t the hit that did it. I was pile-drived into the ground. I thought my shoulder blade popped out.”

Getting blindsided by blitzing linebackers, drilled in the chest or just driven to the turf by a 300-pound lineman is a way of life for NFL quarterbacks. The punishment their bodies absorb, though, is not nearly what it used to be because the league has implemented many rules to protect them.

But it has been a big part of Roethlisberger’s 10-year career with the Steelers. He has been sacked 386 times, more than any active NFL quarterback and 13th most of any quarterback in the history of the league.

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Peyton Manning, who has played six more seasons than Roethlisberger, has been sacked 270 times. San Diego’s Philip Rivers, who entered the league the same time as Roethlisberger, has been sacked 137 fewer times than the two-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback.

Of the top 21 most-sacked quarterbacks in NFL history, only Neil Lomax (362) averaged more sacks per season (45.25) than Roethlisberger (38.6). Even John Elway, another No. 7 who was the second-most sacked quarterback in NFL history (516), was sacked less on average than Roethlisberger (32.25 times per season).

That’s a lot of wear and tear on Roethlisberger, even though he has the big, stout frame to withstand it. He was sacked 35 times in the first nine games last season but played every snap for one of the few times in his career.

At age 32, is he starting to feel the cumulative effect of all those sacks?

“No, because I feel good,” Roethlisberger said. “I felt better the last couple years than I felt in a long time. It’s not something I think about.”

The Steelers have talked to Roethlisberger for several years about trying to take fewer sacks to preserve his longevity. It was one of the objectives of offensive coordinator Todd Haley when he was hired after the 2011 season.

But, until the final seven games last season, when Roethlisberger was sacked only seven times, there was little evidence of that. He was sacked 30 times in 12 games in 2012 and was on pace to be sacked nearly 64 times after he was dumped 35 times in the first nine games last season.

“I play the game one way — I play hard,” Roethlisberger said. “I don’t play it thinking, ‘OK, next play.’ I play that play like it could be my last. I want to give it everything I have because it might be. You don’t know.

“Coaches say, ‘Throw the ball away, live another day.’ For me, I’m going to give it everything I have because that’s the competitor I am and I don’t know any other way. I’m going to give it everything I have and fight to the end.”

ESPN’s “Sports Science” show measured the forces that defensive lineman and linebackers can exert on quarterbacks when they are being sacked. The highest force was registered by Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, who exerted 3,200 pounds of force on a test-crash dummy. The scientists performing the study said the force exerted by Suh was “more like a freight train” than a car crash.

“Combining the force data … and my knowledge of the injury tolerances of the human body, it is quite remarkable that Big Ben is still standing after so many sacks,” said Richard Debski, an associate professor of bioengineering and orthopaedic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh.

Make no mistake, the cumulative effect of all those sacks takes its toll on a quarterback’s body. And sometimes even more.

CTE is major concern now

Former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre was sacked more than any player in NFL history, a whopping 525 times. That does not take into account the countless other times the fearless quarterback stood in the pocket and took a thundering hit just to complete a pass.

None of this concerned Favre, the league’s all-time leader in passing yardage, until he retired and couldn’t remember his daughter playing youth soccer one summer.

“For the first time in 44 years, that put a little fear in me,” Favre said in an interview on a Washington, D.C., radio station earlier this year.

Quarterbacks — most players, for that matter — don’t think about such things during their playing days. Talk to NFL players and most will tell you they understand the inherent risks that go with playing the sport. Typically, those risks usually include injuries to the knees, shoulders, ankles and ligaments that could end a career.

Only recently has it been discovered that some of those risks include brain damage, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Early symptoms include memory loss, depression, confusion, and aggression.

While players at all positions are subject to be diagnosed with CTE, quarterbacks could be as likely as any because of the number of blind-side and unprotected hits they could take standing in the pocket.

“You’re not anticipating the hit,” Roethlisberger said. “Running backs know as soon as they touch the ball they could get hit. Most of time running backs are looking where they’re running, and, obviously, they could get hit from the side. For us, we should be looking down the field, so we don’t always see the hits that are coming to us because we’re not looking at them.”

That’s one of the reasons the NFL instituted all the rules designed to protect the quarterback, including any hit delivered above the chest area or even something so simple as a defender raking his hand across their helmet.

Those rules were not in effect when 1970s-era quarterbacks such as Anderson, Plunkett and Warren Moon played the position.

“The rules in my day were a lot different,” said Plunkett, who played for three teams from 1971-86 and was sacked 380 times, 15th most in league history. “Quarterbacks took more of a beating. There was no outside-the-pocket and throw-the-ball away rule. You either ran out of bounds or you got hit from all angles. There was no two-step rule. They didn’t have the sliding rule. If you slid forward, someone would jump on you coming the other way.

“Quarterbacks took a lot more beating than quarterbacks of today. If you took 100 sacks by somebody in my era and somebody in today’s era, it’s a lot different. I think they were more severe back then. I think the cumulative effect of those hits would be a lot greater.”

In 1976, Terry Bradshaw was not only sacked in a game in Cleveland, but he also was body-slammed to the turf, head and neck first, by Browns defensive end Joe “Turkey” Jones. For his actions, Jones was penalized 15 yards and later fined $3,000. In today’s NFL, such a deliberate and violent act would result in a much heavier fine and suspension.

“It was legal to hit the quarterback in the head, as long as it wasn’t late,” said Anderson, who played 16 years for the Cincinnati Bengals and is 10th on the all-time list with 398 sacks. “It was legal to hit him in the knees, as long as it wasn’t late. The offensive linemen couldn’t extend their hands. If you look at statistics back in those days, if you threw for 2,200 or 2,300 yards, you lead the league. You didn’t throw as much because offensive lineman didn’t have a chance.”

Quarterbacks get such preferential treatment because they play the most important position in pro sports. Keeping them healthy is essential to a team’s success.

Last season, 10 of the 12 teams who qualified for the postseason started the same quarterback every game. The Green Bay Packers, who won the NFC North title, were one of the exceptions, using three quarterbacks once Aaron Rodgers was injured.

That came on the heels of a 2012 season that was about as healthy as its gets for NFL quarterbacks: Twenty of the 32 teams started the same quarterback in every game, the highest percentage for a full, non-strike season since the 1970 merger

“I wish we were protected better,” said Moon, a Hall of Fame quarterback who played 17 years in the league and was sacked 458 times, seventh most all time. “Some of the hits we took back in the day — they could still drive us into the turf when they hit us. Those really were painful. It didn’t always cause an injury, but it made you a little more antsy about taking hits. The guys these days don’t really have to put up with it.”

The hits keep on coming

What effect does getting hit, even if a quarterback isn’t sacked, have on a player?

Pro Football Focus studied every throw from every quarterback in every game the past six years and came up with some startling data.

For example:

• The completion percentage for quarterbacks drops to 37.8 percent when they are hit compared to 63 percent when they aren’t. Similarly, their interception rate jumps from 2.7 percent to 4.8 percent.

• When quarterbacks haven’t been sacked or hit in a game, they have an average accuracy percentage of 73 percent.

• After every sack or hit the quarterback takes, their accuracy percentage decreases by an average of a half of a percent.

• Elite quarterbacks don’t seem to be affected by the first few sacks or hits. Eventually, their accuracy decreases, but at a slower rate than the typical quarterback.

The study by PFF showed that an above-average quarterback after five hits or sacks performs as well as an average quarterback with no hits or sacks. Once the above-average quarterback has been sacked or hit 10 times, they play as well as a below-average quarterback who hasn’t been sacked or hit.

Even after a number of sacks or hits, the elite quarterback still is significantly more accurate than the average quarterback who has taken none.

This would be the case with Roethlisberger, who has completed 63.2 percent of his passes in the six seasons where he has been sacked 40 or more times. What’s more, the highest completion percentage of his career (66.6) came in the 2009 season when he was sacked 50 times, a personal high.

“If early on in the game you’re getting a lot of pressure and guys are breaking down for whatever reason, it’s a natural thing for you to start to either, let me go talk to the [offensive] line, let me figure out what’s going on and maybe you kind of peek or get out of the pocket a little earlier,” Roethlisberger said. “That doesn’t happen too much for me. I’ve been doing it long enough. You just find a way to deal with it.”

And remember the hard ones.

First Published: September 3, 2014, 4:00 a.m.

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Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is sacked hard to the M&T Bank Stadium turf by the Ravens' Bart Scott in 2006.  (Peter Diana/Post-Gazette)
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