As Ben Roethlisberger prepares for his 18th season with the Steelers he is doing so under a new Offensive Coordinator. Matt Canada will be Roethlisberger's 5th coordinator so Ben has been through this before but he admits this time it will be quite a bit different.
"It's definitely harder when all of a sudden something looks the exact same but it's called something completely different," Roethlisberger said during an OTA Zoom call. "It's a big challenge but that's the game of football; learning new things and new challenges. Coach Canada's offense is one that hopefully will be a good one. We need to execute the plays that he calls and hopefully we'll be better than we were last year."
The offense can't be much worse that it was by the end of last season when the Steelers went from an 11-0 start to a 1-5 finish which included an ugly playoff loss to the Browns at Heinz Field in which Roethlisberger threw for over 500 yards but 4 interceptions.
The word from opponents, ex-teammates and even at least one current teammate was that Randy Fichtner's schemes – which included much input from Roethlisberger himself – was too predictable.
When I asked Ben about that Tuesday, he started out tongue-and-cheek. "This offense is going to be completely different and you'll see nothing that you've ever seen in the past," Ben scoffed. "We're going to try and just throw literally everything at everybody so that way we won't be predictable."
But then he did address the issue. "It's just, it's new," he continued, "in all seriousness there's a lot of new, so for someone who's kind of had a very similar offense for a long time - verbiage wise - it's taken some extra studying. But it's a fun new challenge. Guys are getting it and hopefully it translates into winning football."
There is a school of thought that Roethlisberger won't take to Canada's changes because of his preference to operate out of the shotgun and his perceived reluctance to line up under center. But Ben insists that not the case.
"We've gone under center, we've gone shotguns and yeah he's got more motions but I feel like that's where the NFL is going right now, a lot of the jet sweep motions and stuff," Roethlisberger said. "I can go under center, never said I didn't like it; we'll be under center, we'll be in the gun, we'll move. Like I said earlier, we'll throw a lot of different looks and schemes at people and see what works."
That's not to say that Ben won't any influence ion how Canada constructs his offense. "We've had quite a few (conversations), I'm trying to do everything I can to be open to the new challenges," Ben said. "He's been really good about saying "hey Ben if there's something you don't like just let me know then we can talk through it or we can throw it out.'"
"I think communication is the key to anything," he concluded. "That's what we've been doing and it's going really well so far."
Of course, "so far" is only 4 days into OTA's so it is early. Then again, Roethlisberger has attended 3 of them already which may be the most voluntary workouts he has attended in quite a few off-seasons.
