TALK ABOUT A DISTRACTION
Head football coaches hate distractions.
They want their players to be able to devote 100% of their football attention to getting ready for the next game.
Ben Roethlisberger, who seemed to be having a great time on the sidelines yukking it up with “his guys” during the first three preseason games, should go out of his way to apologoize to them on his way out the door to serve his suspension.
His stupidity in Georgia had an effect on his team back in March, but it didn’t affect the football part of the team. It affected his teammates because it embarrassed a lot of them and put them in the position of having to either defend or condemn him. It was just one All Pro embarrassment.
Now, with The Great Quarterback Fiasco of 2010, we’re seeing the football results of his stupidity.
Maybe Byron Leftwich will come out in the opener against Atlanta and show that the preseason is overrated.
I think what fans and media tend to forget is the value that NFL coaches put on how a player performs in practice.
Maybe Mike Tomlin has seen enough good things from Leftwich in practice that he’s not as worried about his lack of playing time in the exhibition games as you think he should be.
Right now the consensus is that Tomlin has totally screwed up the quarterback situation and in 11 days we may or may not have proof that he did.
But, in the end, if the quarterback situation is screwed up, it’s nobody’s fault but Big Ben Roethlisberger’s.
I was one of the many who said back in April that the Steelers would be better off trading Roethlisberger because of the distraction issue. I’m not as sure now that that would have been a good idea.
Maybe it’s because training camp wasn’t the circus that I thought it would be and because Roethlisberger has handled himself so well.
But, with Tomlin turning the quarterback position into such a fiasco, you have to wonder a little bit if the Steelers might have been better off, at least in 2010, if they had made a trade and been forced to settle on a starting quarterback back in April.
If the guys who are here for the first four games can hold the fort and Roethlisberger comes back and plays as well as he did in the preseason, the Great Quaterback Fiasco of 2010 will be an instant footnote.
I still have a feeling, though, that, because of so many other issues, this is not going to be a good year to be the Steelers’ quarterback.
