It’s time to cut Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger if he won’t retire.
Sunday night’s humiliating loss was a total team loss. T.J. Watt was nearly non-existent on the defensive side of the ball and center Maurkice Pouncey struggled while gifting the Browns 6 points on the first snap of the game.
But with four interceptions, Big Ben put the Steelers in a hole they couldn’t dig out of Sunday night and watched their AFC North rival Cleveland Browns win their first playoff game since 1994.
With some many free agents on the Steelers roster, 19 to be exact, Colin Dunlap and Chris Mack say they team needs to move on from Roethlisberger, who will count for $41.250 million against the salary cap next season.
If the Steelers cut Roethlisberger, they’ll save over $20 million to get more players signed, including linebacker Bud Dupree possibly.
It is a shocking turn around since only a few months ago, people, including our own Jim Colony was saying that Roethlisberger should be in the MVP conversation but for the last month and a half has fallen way off that radar.
“When your play slides like that and you play that terribly and Ben has played terribly for a month and a half it can happen like that,” said Dunlap.
Mack says the Steelers are clearly not currently a championship caliber team so why continue to keep it together the way it is?
“Rip the Band-Aid off, fortify your defense . . . that’s the way forward, without having to rip it down to the studs and if you keep holding on to this pipe dream that Ben Roethlisberger is going to get you one last dance with the Lombardi trophy with Maurkice Pouncey and David DeCastro and Al Villanueva on the offensive line then your hamstringing yourself even farther into the future beyond next year,” said Mack.
While it will be hard to part ways with Roethlisberger, Dunlap says the Steelers did the same thing with Troy Polamalu when they knew it was his time to go.
“You can appreciate all the Ben did, you appreciate what he was and still tell him he’s got to hit the road,” said Dunlap. “What are you waiting for, what are you holding on to?”
“Hoping and wishing that maybe we’ll get to the playoffs or maybe we’ll get hot and get on a run that’s not how it gets done, it’s not hoping and wishing, it’s coming up with a strategy to keep as many pieces in place as you can because you’re going to lose a ton of them and that starts with creating some kind of cap space,” said Mack.