Steelers President Art Rooney II spent part of Thursday answering questions from Steelers Nation Unite members. We’ll share his answers about Big Ben:

“We wanted Ben back,” said Rooney. “The key to it was to be able to restructure his contract in a way that allowed us to keep Ben and be able to sign some other players. Ben cooperated with that, was willing to make some changes in his contract, and that allowed us to keep him on the team this year which was always our goal.

“I thought Ben had a very good year last year for somebody that was coming off of arm surgery. Hopefully he will have an even better year this year with another year under his belt in terms of recovering from that arm surgery. It was a very serious surgery, and we were uncertain how well he would be able to recover from it. He did a great job rehabbing and we are excited to have him back for this season.”


You can read more from Mr. Rooney’s Q&A, or listen to it here.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Mark Curnutte, the day after:

QB Ben packs ’em in for pro workout –

Scouts or assistant coaches from nearly all 32 NFL teams made their way to Oxford. Two head coaches, Green Bay’s Mike Sherman and the Giants’ Tom Coughlin – along with Giants’ general manager Ernie Accorsi and three of the club’s scouts – were there, too.

Charting each of the players’ moves with stopwatches and clipboards, scouts watched them lift weights, jump, sprint and run agility drills before congregating in Yager Stadium for the main event: Ben throws.

And Roethlisberger, a sure-fire top-five pick rated along with Mississippi’s Eli Manning as one of the top two quarterbacks in the draft, did not disappoint.

He threw long and short, soft and hard, down the middle and toward the sideline – showing off his impressive arm and timing on the deep out pattern.

Roethlisberger ran 4.76 seconds in the 40-yard dash. And he clocked an 11.8 – considered fast for a quarterback – on a three-cone agility drill.

“He’s probably going to be gone before we pick, but I always want to cover our bases in case something happens – he falls or we move up,” Sherman said. “I thought he had an excellent workout. He did everything here he does on tape. You have to watch the game tape to really appreciate what kind of quarterback he is and what kind of leadership skills he has.”


(Mr. Curnutte’s 2004 article is no longer available to read online)



From NFL.com‘s “Pro Day Workout – Ben Roethlisberger” the day after:

As expected, there was a big turn out here as over 50 NFL personnel people attended.

Roethlisberger’s workout was scripted by Steve Clarkson, who is a former San Jose State QB and currently helps prepare quarterbacks for the NFL. Roethlisberger (6-4 7/8, 240) ran his 40s in 4.81 and 4.82. He had a 30-inch vertical, a 4.32 short shuttle and a 6.81 three-cone drill.

His positional drills were referred to as outstanding. They had him throw a lot of passes on the move, and threw about 80 passes total with very good accuracy. He threw to Grant Mattos, who was with the Chargers last year, along with Cal Murry, a running back at Miami, Ohio […]