“That’s December style football there…this time of year you have to find any way possible to win a game. It can be ugly, pretty, whatever it is, as long as you win. I thought our defense was awesome today and [Le’Veon Bell] was spectacular.” — Ben.

From Will Brinson at CBS Sports:

Things are getting down to the nitty gritty in the NFL playoff hunt now, and the AFC wild-card race is about to get wild.

Multiple teams kept their hopes alive with huge wins on Sunday, but no one was bigger than the Steelers, who took down the Bills 27-20 to put themselves into the playoffs, pending the result of the Ravens Monday night game against the Patriots.

Pittsburgh looked just as scary as you would expect them to look knowing their weapons — Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown are deadly and Le’Veon Bell is storming into an offseason that will feature him negotiating a new contract extension. The timing of Bell’s big day, which featured 236 rushing yards and an absurd 298 yards from scrimmage, couldn’t have been better.

The Steelers went on the road in horrible weather and took care of business against a lesser team. It’s what you want to see from a legitimate playoff contender.


You can read more from Mr. Brinson here.



And from Jeremy Fowler at ESPN.com:

How’s this for dominance: The Steelers handed the ball off to Bell nine times on their 10-play, 82-yard touchdown drive to open the second half.

And he kept getting stronger, touching the ball 42 times by late in the fourth quarter, adding 62 receiving yards on four catches.

Since Week 10, Bell has 166 touches for more than 900 yards.

Willie Parker owned the previous record of 223 rushing yards set in 2006 against the Cleveland Browns. Bell became the first player in Steelers history to record multiple games of 200 scrimmage yards and three touchdowns.

After making 26 passing attempts to 13 rushes in the first half despite Bell’s averaging nearly 6 yards per carry, the Steelers rightly turned to the “handoff” section of the playbook. Without a clear-cut second receiver on the outside, that’s the best way for Pittsburgh to win away from Heinz Field, where Roethlisberger is more comfortable airing it […]

From ESPN‘s Jeremy Fowler this week:

The hunting and snowmobiling is great fun, but Ben Roethlisberger doesn’t visit Ellicottville, New York, for an annual offseason “buddies” trip simply for sport.

He goes for the campfires. He goes for Jim Kelly. And he goes for the quarterback stories you can’t get in a scouting report.

“When you’re up and around each other for four or five days, and you’re sitting around a fire, you talk about everything,” Roethlisberger said.

As the Pittsburgh Steelers make their first appearance in Buffalo since 2010, Roethlisberger has been texting with Kelly this week about how to catch up in person before Sunday’s game. They settled on dinner Saturday night.

The relationship stretches far beyond pleasantries — like, 8,000 miles farther. Kelly, the Buffalo Bills great who has valiantly battled oral cancer since 2014, said in a phone interview Thursday between hunting trips that he’s taking Roethlisberger and a few others to New Zealand this offseason for a red-stag archery tournament.

Roethlisberger and Kelly have experience hunting turkeys together. But more importantly for Kelly, hunting is simply an extension of fellowship with Roethlisberger, who met one of his childhood idols at a golf tournament many years ago.

Kelly, 56, is proud to see the growth in Roethlisberger, 34, who once upon a time showed up to an event in Buffalo with security guards. Roethlisberger, who long ago admitted to being humbled by his early career travails, has “no ego, down to earth, cool with everybody,” Kelly said.

“Without a doubt, playing for a franchise like the Steelers, there’s a certain graduation, and when you’re young and going from nothing to a millionaire, that changes you,” Kelly said of Roethlisberger. “But he’s handling himself pretty darned good. He’s far from that. That was a phase.”

The two hit it off instantly, prompting Roethlisberger and several other mutual friends to make the trip to Ellicottville every offseason for the last seven years or so. They slice through the snow outdoors and play pool indoors, with Kelly providing laughter at a no-huddle pace.

Through many conversations, Roethlisberger became touched by Kelly’s story, from his cancer battle to the loss of his 8-year-old son, Hunter, to Krabbe disease in 2005.

An offseason story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called ‘Ben’s Quiet Quest’ reported that Roethlisberger gave his third son, Bodie, the […]

In the spirit of the holiday season, Ben is awarding two grants this week!

Today, he announced the tenth and eleventh grants of the 2016 season from The Ben Roethlisberger Foundation at The Giving Back Fund.

The Foundation will be distributing grants to the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office and East Aurora-Town of Aurora Police Department in the Buffalo, New York area where the Steelers play the Bills on Sunday, December 11th.

The Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office will use their grant to purchase a K-9 dog. The East Aurora-Town of Aurora Police Department will use their grant to purchase a K-9 ballistic vest and cargo box for the K-9 patrol vehicle.

Deputy, Bryan S. Burmaster stated, “Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office is extremely grateful for the generosity of the Ben Roethlisberger Foundation and we are very excited to have been selected as one of this year’s grant recipients. We are very proud of our K-9 unit’s success and funding from the Foundation will allow us to continue to provide the citizens of our county with the best K-9 assets around. We would like to thank Lakeshore Humane Society for being our sponsor in this endeavor. On behalf of all law enforcement K-9 units, we are grateful for organizations such as the Ben Roethlisberger Foundation that believe in our mission and are willing to support its success.”

Chief of Police, Shane Krieger stated, “The East Aurora-Town of Aurora Police Department thanks Ben Roethlisberger and his foundation for supporting our K-9 program. Being a small department, it is challenging to equip our officers and K-9 with the tools they need to serve and protect our community, but the Ben Roethlisberger Foundation has made that job much easier. Thank you!”


Hey Steelers fans:

You can support future K-9 grants by joining Ben’s crowdfunding campaign on https://pledgeit.org/big-ben. Big Ben is pledging $1,000 per touchdown this season to his foundation. Supporters can increase the impact by pledging to donate any amount per touchdown.


For more information about The Ben Roethlisberger Foundation or The Giving Back Fund, please contact Charisse Browner at www.givingback.org.

From Teresa Varley, Steelers.com:

Ladarius Green was signed by the Steelers this offseason to be a weapon for Ben Roethlisberger in the offense, and with four games under his belt after coming off an ankle injury, he is doing just that.

Green pulled in six receptions for 110 yards against the Giants last week, the first 100-yard game of his career, and also scored his first touchdown in the black and gold, a 20-yard grab on a play that he hadn’t even run before.

“That is a play, I don’t think he ran that specific play yet,” said Roethlisberger. “For me to call it and him to execute it flawlessly speaks volumes for the work he has put in mentally. To not get that rep physically, but mentally be ready to do it, able to do it, be the actor, the fake block and then make the play. That is just awesome on his part.”

Roethlisberger and Green are developing a rapport on the field, one that both admit needs to continue to grow. While they hooked up for six receptions on Sunday, both know there were plays left on the field, including an incompletion late in the game that could have moved the chains and kept the clock going with 1:43 to play in the game. Instead Randy Bullock came on for a 38-yard field goal, and the Giants got the ball back, driving down for a touchdown.

“It’s just making the plays that are there,” said Roethlisberger. “I could have hit him on that last play on the third down, I overthrew him trying to be a little too cautious. I just have to put it up there for him to make the play. That is on me. Some of the combative catches, I know he wants to make the catches where there is a guy right on him. He made the one on third down where there were two guys on him. That was awesome. There just needs to be more consistency on my part and his part working together. That just comes from repetition and working together. I have all of the confidence in the world in him.”

Part of that confidence comes from the mental approach Green took while he was injured, not just sitting back and […]

From Ben’s radio show this morning on 93.7 The Fan:

Coming off the Steelers 24-14 victory over the New York Giants this past week, you’d think Ben Roethlisberger would want to open The #1 Cochran Ben Roethlisberger Show talking about the offense hitting on all cylinders, but instead he had a message for the Pirates…keep McCutchen.

“I should start this off by saying, lets keep Cutch in Pittsburgh. He should be a Pirate for life, that’s just my opinion.” Ben also shared with us that he has spoken with McCutchen this week about the trade rumors swirling around him.

Turning his focus to the game he played this past week, Ben had a glowing review of tight end Ladarius Green who had a big performance catching 6 passes for 110-yards and a touchdown.

“We haven’t had a lot of game time together, and even practice time,” Ben said. “You would have thought that we’ve been playing for years,” Ben said about the way he and Green have been able to improvise together.

Another one of Ben’s weapons in the offense had a big game in Antonio “Ronald” Brown, as he told reporters he wants to be known as from now on. Ben joked with the guys about Brown saying he wants to be known as Ronald and what a unique character the team’s top receiver is.

“I have no idea, I don’t know where it came from, he was calling himself Ronald Ocean and was calling me Billy for whatever reason, I have on idea.”

Looking at the big picture this year, Ben talked about the close race in the AFC North and how they need to take care business now if they want to be serious Super Bowl contenders.

“We need to shoot for 4-0, we are in the thick of this AFC North division race, we gotta win the division. At this time of year, the Super Bowl champ has probably lost their last game, so you have to take that approach that we need to go win every game we play anymore.”

All season long, it looked like the Patriots would be the team standing in the way of any team looking to win an AFC Championship, but injuries to keep players like Rob Gronkowski and Danny Amendola have brought them back to the pack. […]