For a player coming off major elbow surgery who continues to admit he’s missing open receivers, Ben Roethlisberger is off to the best start of his sterling 17-year career with the Steelers.
He threw three more touchdowns with no interceptions in Sunday’s 38-29 victory against the Philadelphia Eagles, raising his season total to 10 touchdowns against just one interception after four games.
What’s more, he has had a passer rating of at least 100 in three of the first four games, something he has done only two other times since coming into the league in 2004. Not bad for a quarterback who played only six quarters last season and didn’t have the benefit of any preseason activity.
“I'm still missing the deep ball too much, still overthrowing,” Roethlisberger said. “I know last week I talked about it and said I'd rather overthrow it than underthrow it. But I've got to figure it out. I don't know if the doc made my arm, I guess, a little stronger. I don't know. I've got to figure out how to connect on those deep balls a little more.”
Roethlisberger, 38, has never had a season with such disparity between touchdowns and interceptions after four games.
The only time he has thrown more than 10 touchdowns in the first quarter of a season was 2016, when he had 11. But he also threw four interceptions.
The only time he didn’t throw an interception in the first four games was 2005, but he threw only seven touchdowns. The closest he has come to matching his current 10:1 ratio was 2012, when he had nine touchdowns and one interception during the team’s 2-2 start.
Roethlisberger’s 125.9 passer rating against the Eagles — the highest of any quarterback in Week 5 — was the third time in four games his rating was over 100. The only other seasons in which he did that was 2005, when the Steelers started 3-1, and 2014, when they were 2-2.
After four games, Roethlisberger’s passer rating is 111.3. Only five quarterbacks in the league have a higher rating. He is the league’s leading candidate to be comeback player of the year.
“I feel comfortable,” Roethlisberger said. “I feel like we definitely have some new things in this offense that I'm not as familiar with in terms of having plays for a long period of time and things like that. But I feel like I get us in the right play most of the time.”
Racking up the stats
After his monster game against the Eagles, receiver Chase Claypool leads all rookies and is tied for fifth in the league with four touchdown catches. He is third in the league in average yards per catch (20.1) among players with at least 12 receptions.
Imagine what Claypool’s numbers — seven catches for 110 yards — would have been if he didn’t have a debatable offensive pass interference call on a 42-yard touchdown; or his left foot tapped the ground instead of cornerback Darius Slay’s leg on a 33-yard reception that was ruled incomplete?
Nowhere to run
The Steelers got caught in a third-and-9 blitz on the 74-yard touchdown run by the Eagles’ Miles Sanders in the first quarter. It was the first run longer than 17 yards allowed by the Steelers this season. But it should not take away how strong the defense has been against the run.
Sanders finished with 80 yards rushing, the most by an opponent in four games, but he had just 6 yards on his other 10 carries. That touchdown run, though, dropped the Steelers to No. 2 in the league in rush defense, allowing an average of 64 yards per game.
“Teams are going to try to get us away from our blitz pressure because they understand that we are coming at quarterbacks on third down,” said inside linebacker Vince Williams, who leads the league with nine tackles for loss, most in the first four games in franchise history. “If you make blitzes like that on third down, people are going to come up with ways to get away from you.”
Ticket talk
And about that announced crowd of 4,708 at Heinz Field on Sunday ...
Part of the reason the attendance was below the mandated approximate limit of 5,500 was because the Steelers had to put some season-ticket holders in larger pods, thereby limiting the number of tickets they could sell in those pods for safety reasons.
For example, if a season-ticket holder wanted to buy two tickets and the only pods available were for four, six or eight people, the Steelers could not sell the remaining tickets in those pods. Conceivably, an eight-person pod might have had only two people sitting in that area. Same with a six-person pod.
The Steelers were prohibited under health guidelines to sell the remaining tickets in those pods to another outside party.
Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com and Twitter @gerrydulac.
First Published: October 12, 2020, 2:37 p.m.
