Ben Roethlisberger Sees Discipline Issue With Team
PITTSBURGH (93-7 The Fan) - Coming off the teams fourth straight loss, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger joined "The Cook and Poni Show" on Sportsradio 93.7 The Fan for the "#1 Cochran Ben Roethlisberger Show" and discussed the lack of discipline that is hurting the team this year.
Ben addressed the talk out there that he was calling out specific players or coaches for the lack of discipline.
"I never specifically said coaches, I never specifically said players, I said 'players and coaches'...It's a generalization that you see undisciplined things. You watch the film yesterday and you see undisciplined play, undisciplined actions in plays," he said.
How does that get fixed? Ben says he knows how.
"It's tough, it has to come from within and it has to come from coaches. We have to be able to hold ourselves accountable and hold each other accountable. I've said that before on this show and I've said it in the locker room before, it's the guys. You point the thumb at yourself, you don't point the finger. So everyone needs to just take a look at themselves, myself included," he said.
There was a report from the NFL Network that Ben had a private meeting with Mike Tomlin last week to help demand more urgency and exactness from the team. Ben said there was too much made of his sit down with the head coach.
"It always amazes me how the NFL Network, like do they bug everything? Do they assume they know everything?" Ben said. "I always wonder where they get this information. Being the quarterback and being a veteran and leader on this team, Coach Tomlin and I have talked multiple times a week. There's probably never a week that goes by where we don't have a behind closed-door talk...so when they make this a big drama, like we went in and shut the door and hashed things out or whatever it is, it's completely false. I shouldn't say that, it's true in the sense that we went in and sat down, but we do that every week anyway."
The team's current 4-game losing streak had an especially gut-wrenching loss added to it against the Cowboys this week. Ben talked about how the team rebounds from such a heartbreaking finish.
"If there is ever a silver lining to take out of a football game, which a loss is a loss and that will eat all of us up and chew us all up, is that's probably the best team in football and we fought our butts off and it came down to the last nine seconds or whatever it was. We just have to come back to work on Wednesday with AFC North football on our minds and get ready to play," Ben said.
While talking about that dramatic loss to the Cowboys, Ben discussed his fake spike that resulted in a 15-yard touchdown pass to Antonio Brown, which put the team ahead with 42 seconds left in the game.
"We were moving down the field, and when you're moving down the field, defensive guys, you know they're getting tired, so I started yelling, 'Clock, clock, clock!' And everybody heard me, I mean the defense heard me, our offense heard me, I mean Coach Haley heard me...Coach Haley was in my ear talking to me like, 'Don't waste the down! Don't waste the down!' He must have said that 20 times from the time I first started yelling spike it or clock it...what he meant was...don't waste a down by just spiking it...and I knew what he was talking about. But, I also knew that their defense was a little tired, they heard me saying, 'spike it, spike it,' the right corner was a guy that wasn't in the game a lot, he kind of came in late, everyone is saying spike, and I looked at AB and just kind of gave him a little nod signal, and we did a quick little fake and I threw it to the back and AB did the rest of the work."
Ben also talked about getting back into some AFC North football this week as the Steelers will travel to Cleveland to take on the 0-10 Browns. Despite the Browns' record, Ben said this is a big game for the team.
"We have to win it. It's AFC North football. It's a big game for us, obviously every one the rest of the way here is. We are still kind of holding onto that rope, it's not gone yet," he said.
Ben was asked about the team's hopes in the division as the AFC North is having a down year, meaning the Steelers are still in it.
"That's what I meant by 'we're still kind of holding onto that rope.' It's not lost yet, we still have a chance...it's about when you get hot, when you play your best football," he said.
Click the link below to hear Ben talk more about the teams accountability, the rumors that Cam Heyward may have suffered a serious pectoral injury and what he thought about the play of Ladarius Green and Sammie Coates this past week as Green made his season debut and Coates only saw the field for two snaps.
