NFL Network analyst Marc Ross, who was a member of the New York Giants organization when Eli Manning’s career came to an end, tells the Fan Morning Show the Steelers current quarterback situation with Ben Roethlisberger is eerily similar.
“When those old guys that meant so much to the organization, people make the decisions with emotions as opposed to a football decision and if you just looked at Ben and you saw the way he played, you could tell it was over with for him,” said Ross.
“Once you start excuse making for a quarterback and if we do this, if we get the running back, if we get the line, if we get a better offensive coordinator, that’s when you know you’re in trouble.”
Ross says that Manning was beloved in New York and maybe even more so because of his “squeaky clean” record off the field.
In Manning’s final season, in 2019, he was benched in favor of rookie Daniel Jones in the third week of the season and only returned for a couple games after Jones was injured late in the season.
“When I look at Ben, and you guys see it week to week, it’s just not there and you can blame a lot of things when you just watching him independent, the plays he has to make of everyone else, especially those 4th down plays. . . you know it’s time,” said Ross.
Roethlisberger has been getting the ball out incredibly quickly the past couple seasons and Ross says he saw Manning doing that late in his career as well.
“It’s just something internally that happens in the mind of those quarterbacks . . . they just want to get the ball and get it out of their hand as quickly as possible and despite the down and distance and the situation where they kind of just lose track of that and I think that’s just want happened,” said Ross.
Ross adds that when you do things like that you aren’t giving your team any chance to win.
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Coach Tomlin and players publically have come out in support of Roethlisberger, something that Ross suspects is also how many feel behind the scenes but there are likely some younger players that wonder why he’s still under center.
“I guarantee you that there are some players that are like, ‘man, this guy can’t do it and he’s costing us games’, but you’ll never see that come out publically.