Steelers care more about saving face than the health of Ben Roethlisberger

The Pittsburgh Steelers should have pulled Ben Roethlisberger from an ugly blowout vs the Bengals, but here’s the real reason why they left him in the game. 

Despite Ben Roethlisberger coming off one of his best performances in recent memory against the Los Angeles Chargers, the Steelers didn’t show up to play football against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 12. Obviously, there is plenty of blame to pass around.

Pittsburgh’s offense couldn’t have been worse, and three turnovers didn’t help. Defensively, this unit has given up back-to-back 40-point games and had an inexcusable showing — particularly when it came to stopping the run.

However, something that irks me nearly as bad as the blowout loss itself is the fact that the Steelers kept Roethlisberger in this contest until the tail end of the game.

Going into the half, this game was essentially over as Pittsburgh was down 31-3 (a pick-six from Roethlisberger just before the half didn’t help). While I understand playing the veteran quarterback in the third quarter to try to get a spark heading into Week 13, I was not on board with leaving him in the game for an unwinnable contest.

The Bengals would score two more times — a field goal in the third quarter and a touchdown to open the fourth. This gave Cincinnati a whopping 41-3 lead… Yet, Big Ben remained in the game. Why did the team do this? To salvage the despicable performance of the face of their franchise.

Steelers disregarded Ben’s health

You can try to put any sort of spin on this that you want, but you’d only be fooling yourself. The fact of the matter is that Pittsburgh disregarded Ben Roethlisberger’s health in order to save face in this gut-wrenchingly poor contest.

Prior to Roethlisberger’s only touchdown scoring drive of the game that came with just 2:59 in remaining in regulation, the Steelers quarterback had just 194 passing yards, 0 touchdowns, 2 interceptions, and a lost fumble, via ESPN. Perhaps it was Ben who made the call that he wanted to remain in the game to salvage his awful statistics.

The other reason this team may have left their starting quarterback in this game is because they wanted to bridge the 38-point deficit and make this game look not quite as bad as it was. After all, Mike Tomlin seems to be more concerned about avoiding a losing record each year rather than making necessary changes that can help win them a Super Bowl.

Whatever the reason, I think most Steelers fans could join me in agreeing that leaving Ben Roethlisberger in the game in the fourth quarter down 38 points was a risky move and one that had no benefit. This team has made some head-scratching decisions this year, and saving face was apparently more important than the health of their starting quarterback.