While the national media has never been too kind to Big Ben, even the fans of the black-and-gold have seemed eager to jump on board with this idea, with the more vocal parts of the fan base loudly clamoring for the front office to move on from Ben and look to the future.
Comment threads were filled with “Randy Fichtner sucks, his offense is way too predictable!”, “Ben is slow, and he can’t throw the deep ball anymore!”, “Tomlin is a terrible, underachieving joke of a head coach!”, and my personal favorite excuse for the playoff loss, “Ju-Ju just had to go and TikTok before every game! What a diva!”.
There were a lot of problems that the Steelers had to deal with last year, be it season-ending injuries to starters, an aging and injury-riddled offensive line, bland, unimaginative play-calling, or the NFL screwing them over by shuffling their games around and leaving them without a functional bye week.
If Ben wants to retire, that’s fine, but does anyone really want to see him suit up in another team’s jersey, a la Philip Rivers? Personally, I’d rather see Ben play with the Steelers until his arm falls off, rather than watch him finish his career with whatever desperate team throws the most cash at him in free-agency.
Besides, even if Ben doesn’t win another title before calling it a career, we can always just go back and watch him win Super Bowl XLIII a thousand more times.