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Since retiring after the 2021 season, Ben Roethlisberger has seen five different quarterbacks start for the Pittsburgh Steelers as the team continues to try to find his long-term successor. The Steelers’ quest has continued this year; Pittsburgh recently re-signed Mason Rudolph, drafted Will Howard in the sixth round and has put itself in position to sign future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers.
Roethlisberger, who like Rodgers will be enshrined in Canton, Ohio, as soon as he is eligible, recently offered some advice to Howard, the former Ohio State passer who was overjoyed when Pittsburgh selected him this past weekend.
“He needs to understand, and I would tell him this: you don’t have pressure, bud,” Roethlisberger said on his podcast, via Sports Illustrated. “You’re a sixth-rounder. There’s no pressure. He should go into this thing with like, [the mentality of], I can play free. I have no pressure.”
Unlike Howard, Roethlisberger was drafted by the Steelers with the expectation that he should eventually be the team’s long-term solution at quarterback. Roethlisberger started his rookie season as a backup, but things quickly changed after starter Tommy Maddox went down with an injury in Week 2. Roethlisberger was inserted into the starting lineup that afternoon in Baltimore and remained there through the 2021 season. The Steelers won two Super Bowls and played in another over that span.
While the outside expectation might be lower for Howard, Roethlisberger wants him to come to the Steelers with a similar mentality.
“He should come in here with the mindset of this is my job,” Roethlisberger said. “I want to be the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers for the next 15, 18, 20 years. That should be his mentality. Now I hope and I would tell him to do it the right way.”
Basically, Roethlisberger is telling Howard to play free while taking advantage of his opportunity. This should be right in Howard’s wheelhouse given what he just did at Ohio State.
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After playing the majority of his college career at Kansas State, Howard’s final college season was spent at Ohio State, a place where the yearly expectation (from both the inside as well as from the fan base) is that it’s national championship or bust. That expectation was perhaps never higher than it was last year, what with Ohio State’s $21 million roster that included the acquisition of Howard.
Howard and the Buckeyes lived up to the hype for most of the season until things came crashing down during Ohio State’s home loss to archrival Michigan during the final game of the regular season. Howard was among the many Buckeye players who didn’t have his best game that day; he appeared tight, hesitant and risk adverse while completing a season-low 57.6% of his passes.
After that loss, the Buckeyes felt the wrath of their passionate fan base, which largely wrote them off entering the College Football Playoff. With no one else to lean on, the Buckeyes looked inward while rededicating themselves to the task of winning it all. The result was four convincing wins that culminated with a triumph over Notre Dame in the national championship game.
One of Ohio State’s best players over that run was Howard, who attributed some of his success during that period to a feeling of playing free following the loss to Michigan.
“It was really a truth-telling time,” Howard said in January about the loss to Michigan. “The facts were laid out there. People were challenged. Everyone including myself had to look in the mirror a little bit and say, ‘What can I do better? How can we fix this thing?’ The thing that we clung to was we still have this opportunity out in front of us to right all these wrongs and go play for a national championship and here we are. We’re right where we wanted to be. A lot of people wrote us off, but we really just believed in ourselves.”
That experience should help Howard in the NFL, where overcoming adversity is a necessary trait. That, along with practicing at a high level on a consistent basis, could lead to big things for Howard at the next level.
“It’ll naturally unfold itself if you’re out here preparing yourself and you’re not trying to undermine the starter and cut his legs out,” Roethlisberger said. “All of a sudden, you’re performing a little better in practice, and it’s like, okay, now go ahead and get your shot with the ones.”
