Ben Roethlisberger often went rogue vs. Mike Tomlin
Big Ben would do his own thing at times.
The Football Feed
Pittsburgh Steelers legendary quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and head coach Mike Tomlin have a total of five Super Bowl championships combined, and both are franchise legends that will forever be held in Steelers lore.
But there absolutely were times during their tenure together when Roethlisberger would go rogue and call his own plays on offense. And these comments from former Steelers backup Charlie Batch are rather telling.
Batch joined Roethlisberger on his Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger podcast, and talked about the good old days together.
“Remember 2007. Tomlin, he’s trying to learn Ben, right. He’s trying to figure this out. So, Ben would always press it; he had a great nod, great impact on the game, like literally always understood situations. He’s running down, and it’s fourth and one, and B.A. [Bruce Arians] was like, ‘What’s he doing?’ And I was like, ‘He’s got this, let him go,’ ‘what play is he calling? [laughs],’ ‘I don’t know.’ And Mike’s like, ‘Ahhhh!’ He runs down the field like 30 yards. He calls a timeout and Ben was like, ‘I got the freaking look I’m looking for! I was gonna run it!’”Batch explained.
“So he comes back and Tomlin’s like, he looks and I said, ‘Trust me, coach. He understands the situation. If he doesn’t like it, he’ll call a timeout, or delay of game and we’ll punt it.’ And from that moment on, he trusted your judgement in that particular situation.”
Batch continued:
“Now, we fast forward, we get to [2009 or 2011], we were in Oakland,” he said. “All of a sudden, we don’t have a play. Third down, it didn’t work. Its literally fourth and two and we’re sitting back and we’re like, ‘Ben’s gonna try to call them offsides,’ and B.A. is like, ‘Okay, I’m not really sure what he’s gonna do.’ And Mike T. looks at me, Coach Tomlin looks at me, ‘What you [Ben] gonna do, Charlie?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m not sure.’ And he looks at me again and he’s like, ‘What’s he gonna do?’ And I said, ‘I think he’s gonna snap the ball [laughs].’
