“I’ll just start by saying again with Ben, we owe it to him I think to have a conversation about how he wants to end his career, and we intend to do that.” — Mr. Art Rooney, II on whether Ben will have the opportunity to ‘write his own end of his story’ in Pittsburgh.

More from Mr. Rooney’s media photo interview as it pertains to #7:

“Ben has been in. I’ve haven’t sat down with him myself yet. He sat down with Coach Tomlin and Kevin and Ben wants to come back. We’ve left that door open. We’ve been up front with Ben in letting him know we couldn’t have him back under the current contract. He understands we have some work to do there. We’ll have more conversations. We’ll have more conversations internally, and we’ll have more conversations with Ben. Obviously, we’ll have to know what the cap number is to finalize some of those decisions.”

And:

“I think we’d like to see Ben back for another year if that can work. There’s a lot of work to be done to see if that can happen.”

You can read Dale Lolley’s recap of Mr. Rooney’s media phone call today here.


And Ben talkin’ back, via Ed Bouchette in a series of tweets this afternoon:

Ben Roethlisberger just told me that “we agree with everything” Art Rooney II said about him returning for 2021.

Ben told me he went to the Steelers first about restructuring his contract. “I want to do everything I can and made that very clear to them from the very beginning that it was my idea to basically help the team however I can this year.”

Ben Roethlisberger just told me: “I don’t care about my pay at all this year!” And is willing to restructure a contract that has a $41 million cap hit for 2021 that includes $19 million in bonus and salary that can be restructured.

More Ben Roethlisberger just now, to me: “I am pretty sure I want to go one more year (because) I think I can do it and give us a real chance at winning.”

Ben Roethlisberger sat on the Steelers bench for an extended period of time following Sunday night’s Wild Card Round loss to the Cleveland Browns, with his center Maurkice Pouncey next to him. Many wondered what was going through the quarterback’s mind, if he thought it would be his last time in the black and gold.

On Wednesday, a few days after the dust settled but the pain of the loss hadn’t, Coach Mike Tomlin was asked about Roethlisberger’s future, and if he had made a decision on whether or not he wanted Roethlisberger back, and to assess his play.

“We haven’t made any decisions about any of our personnel along those lines,” said Tomlin. “All of those discussions are interrelated, and we are just beginning to scratch the surface in terms of what 2021 looks like in terms of the makeup of our team and the issues relative to it.

“In regard to Ben, I can’t say enough about his performance this year. With the uncertainly coming off of injury, and particularly not having an opportunity to perform in preseason games and so forth, there really was a high level of concern about his health and his ability to perform. I can’t say enough about his efforts. I can’t say enough about the efforts of our medical staff and our rehabilitation staff that worked hand in hand with him to get him to that process and get him to stadiums this year. I was more than pleased with the performance of his health and his ability to stay up. In terms of the quality of his play and our play, we’ll begin to assess that in the upcoming days, but in terms of him responding to the challenges that he specifically came into the season ready to face, spectacular.”

You can read more from Teresa Varley’s recap of Coach Tomlin’s earlier press conference right here.

Photo: Steelers