A while back Eli Manning's comments about believing he was an elite quarterback sparked a QB debate. During most of the discussions the biggest question seemed to be where does Big Ben fall in the elite category. The biggest problem with answering this question is what makes a QB elite. In this post I will attempt to argue that Ben Roethlisberger is elite, based on his ability to win game, his statistical analysis of QB rating, yards per game, TDs %,and Int% while showing that he has constant pressure form defenders based on his sack %.
Winning Games:
We already saw from a post by Micheal Bean on this very site that Ben Roethlisberger is the fourth fastest QB all time to get to 70 wins.
Player |
Team |
No. Games to win 70 |
Career Record |
Super Bowls |
Hall of Fame |
Roger Staubach |
94 |
85-29 |
2 |
Yes |
|
Tom Brady |
94 |
113-32 |
3 |
? |
|
Ken Stabler |
98 |
96-49-1 |
1 |
No |
|
Ben Roethlisberger |
Steelers |
100 |
70-30 |
2 |
? |
Fewest Career Starts to 70 Wins Among SB Era QB's |
*Taken from Michael Beans post
However critic will argue that Ben Roethlisberger has always played on a team that has a good running game and statistically the best defense over the decade of the 2000s. To disprove this I would like to point out Ben's number of Game winning drives compared to some of the QB considered elite.
Player |
Games played |
GW drives |
GW drives per year |
Games played per GW drives |
Team record when QB starts (W/L) |
Ben Roethlisberger |
101 |
25 |
3.57 |
4.04 |
70-30 |
Tom Brady |
147 |
32 |
3.2 |
4.60 |
113-32 |
John Elway |
234 |
46 |
2.88 |
5.09 |
148-42 |
Ken Stabler |
184 |
26 |
1.73 |
7.07 |
96-49-1 |
Peyton Manning |
208 |
46 |
3.54 |
4.52 |
141-67 |
Roger Staubach |
131 |
23 |
2.09 |
5.70 |
85-29 |
What does this mean? Ben and the offense is responsible for ~4 Game Winning drives a year and has 1 GW drive every four games. He is responsible for more GW drives per year and has more game winning drives per game then "Captain Comeback" Rodger Staubach, "The Comeback Kid" John Elway, Peyton Manning, Ken Stabler and Tom Brady who was voted the most clutch QB by NFL Network. When starting Ben's team also post a ridiculous .700 win pct. compared to Brady's team .780 win ptc. and Peyton's teams .678 win pct. when they start. Thsi comparison show that Ben is an important part of the teams winning games. It also shows with his number of GW that the argument that he got most of his wins because his defense is not valid.
Stats Comparison:
Player |
Cmp% |
PA/GM |
Yds/Gm |
QB rating |
TDs/yr |
TD% |
Int% |
Yds/C |
Sack% |
Ben Roethlisberger |
63.0 |
28.43 |
228.5 |
92.2 |
20.58 |
5.1 |
3.1 |
12.8 |
8.9 |
Peyton Manning |
64.9 |
34.66 |
263.9 |
94.9 |
30.69 |
5.5 |
2.7 |
11.7 |
3.1 |
Tom Brady |
63.8 |
32.64 |
242.7 |
95.8 |
26.8 |
5.6 |
2.2 |
11.7 |
4.9 |
Ben has a completion % , is rated similar, throws a similar amount of TD per pass attempt and similar Ints per pass attempt as Tom and Peyton. Ben is behind in yds/gm however he averages 4 less pass attempts then the others. Factoring in his completion % and yards per completion that is another 32 yards per game placing him at ~260 yds/GM. He however is sacked almost twice as much as the others, based on sack %. In fact he is the most sacked QB since 2004. Critics have argued that Peyton and Tom decrease their sack rate with their play while Ben increases his. These critics fail to take into consideration the amount of sacks Ben's gets out of.
The object of this post is to illustrate that Ben Roethlisberger is an elite QB because he is wins game in the clutch and statistically isn't far off QBs considered elite today despite not being in a pass heavy offense and being the most sacked QB since 2004. If that didn't convince you then maybe his 2 Super Bowl rings and three appearances might.
*all stats were taken from pro-football-reference.com or calculated from stats on this site. Tom Brady's yearly averages were calculated not counting 2008 cause he didn't play.