Retired Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger talked on his Footbahlin’ podcast this week about some of the places he could’ve ended up if Pittsburgh didn’t draft him.
“It would be hard to fit in to Cleveland because…I win,” Big Ben said jokingly. “Just joking . . . again, love that fanbase.”
But, he’s not wrong. He was 26-3-1 against the Cleveland Browns during his career in the regular season. If he had been drafted by the Browns, his record against the Steelers would not have looked like that.
The Fan Morning Show talked about what would’ve happened and Adam Crowley says he thinks Roethlisberger would’ve been successful, but he would be a Super Bowl Champion.
“I think he would’ve had a Philip Rivers-like career there or Carson Palmer-like career there, you win a lot of ballgames but you never ultimately win the big one,” said Crowley.
If Ben went to Cleveland, what would the Steelers have done?
Doug Whaley, who was an executive with the Steelers at the time, remembered what they were going to do.
“We really thought that (Eli) Manning would go to the Giants, the Browns would take Ben, local guy . . . we didn’t think San Diego was going to take a quarterback because they had Drew Brees at the time, so we were looking at Philip Rivers,” Said Whaley.
But then, the Browns took tight end Kellen Winslow II.
“We all were like, wait a minute,” said Whaley. “We couldn’t believe Ben fell to us.”
Whaley adds they were excited to get Rivers but had a higher grade on Roethlisberger.