Former Steelers knock Ben Roethlisberger amid ongoing drama in Pittsburgh

Ben Roethlisberger is far from the first franchise quarterback to exercise influence in the locker room or even throw his teammates under the bus when things go wrong. There was a time when Peyton Manning had a penchant for that sort of behavior, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a passer the football establishment hails more for leadership prowess.

But apparently there comes a breaking point, where personalities can clash too much and a quarterback ends up alienating those he has to work with. As far as we know, that never happened with Manning. With Roethlisberger, it’s quite possible he helped chase off two of his team’s best skill players: Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell. In Brown’s introductory press conference in Oakland, he used accountability as a watchword. In a sense, he wants to lift the level of quality of the receiving corps, but it’s hard to escape a theme that has kept coming up in stories about the Steelers in recent months.

Pittsburgh general manager Kevin Colbert put a fine point on it in February when he said Roethlisberger is the “unquestioned leader” of the Steelers and that he has a right to call out his teammates, whom Colbert went as far to describe as “52 kids under” Roethlisberger. You could probably find a fair amount of NFL front office people willing to admit that the quarterback, especially one who has won two Super Bowls, has privilege that many others on the team do not. Still, it’s rare to see it laid out in terms that stark.

All of this came to a head following Brown’s benching in the Steelers’ Week 17 game after he missed practice. That might have been when the divisions between Brown and Big Ben really began to show, but there were evident signs of Roethlisberger throwing his weight around for years.

In 2016, Roethlisberger publicly laid the blame on Mike Tomlin for undisciplined play throughout the team. While it’s not uncommon for big-time quarterbacks to dress down their teammates, doing it to the head coach is another matter. We’ve all seen Tom Brady have some fits on the sideline and maybe get heated with a coordinator or two. But speaking ill of Bill Belichick? I’m not sure you could find an example of that.

With Brown and Bell out the door, blame is slowly building toward Roethlisberger. The receiver and running back wanted their money, to be sure, but given how much Bell forfeited by not playing in 2018, then not recouping it in his new deal with the Jets, it’s fair to question whether his relationship with the quarterback could make him willing to settle for less than his maximum value.

Enter into this fracas a story offered by former Steelers running back Josh Harris, who claimed Roethlisberger purposely fumbled the ball late in a 2014 game against the Bengals after then-offensive coordinator Todd Haley called a run when Ben preferred to take a knee.
On Monday night, Roethlisberger’s former backup, Bruce Gradkowski, came to his defense, presenting a video that makes a cogent case that it couldn’t have been a deliberate fumble: