Ben Roethlisberger capped a storybook career as a surefire Hall of Famer; what’s next is anyone’s guess
As he stood at a podium, located in a tiny room inside the bowels of Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium, Ben Roethlisberger was reflecting on what would be the final loss of his 18-year career with the Pittsburgh Steelers when he was asked about his future.
What’s next?
What’s next for a 39-year-old quarterback who won two Super Bowls and appeared in a third, providing the longest era of sustained success for the organization since the 1970s?
What’s in the cards for a husband and father of three who earned more than $265 million and retired with the fifth-most yards, completions and victories, eighth-most touchdown passes, second-most game-winning drives and third-most fourth-quarter comebacks?
What’s the future hold for Roethlisberger aside from knowing his bust will reside in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, when he is eligible in 2027?
Roethlisberger’s response was brief.
“I’m going to do everything I can,” he said, “to be the best husband and father I can be and try to expand God’s kingdom.”
His immediate future, he said on that cold January night, was to take his kids tubing and sled-riding after he returned to Pittsburgh.
Beyond that?
Roethlisberger didn’t have those answers. And he offered little 11 days later when he posted a 2-minute, 16-second video on his website to formally announce his retirement from the NFL.
Former teammates believe retirement for Roethlisberger will involve settling into a coaching role for his kids’ youth teams.
“I think his kids will navigate the direction he goes,” said Charlie Batch, the former Steelers quarterback and Roethlisberger’s teammate from 2004-12.
Others think Roethlisberger’s future will involve charity work and faith-based endeavors. Roethlisberger already funds K-9 units for police departments, and he has told friends he wants to host father-son retreats on property he purchased in the Pittsburgh suburbs.
“I’m interested to see if he picks it up and runs with it,” said former Steelers tight end Vance McDonald, who was one of Roethlisberger’s closest friends before McDonald retired after the 2020 season.
Multi-sport beginnings
In high school, Ryan Hite believed Roethlisberger had what it took to play professionally — just not necessarily football.
“If anybody had said Ben was going to play a pro sport, I’d have said he’d be playing in the NBA,” said Hite, who was a grade ahead of Roethlisberger at Findlay High School in Findlay, Ohio, a city about two hours west of Canton. “No doubt. That was where I figured he would go.”
Roethlisberger had the height, measuring about 6-foot-4 at the time. Although it made him a dominating if not oversized point guard on the basketball court — he averaged 26.5 points a game as a senior — it also made him an inviting target on the football field.
Hite, son of former Findlay football coach Cliff Hite, earned the starting quarterback job late in his sophomore season, when Roethlisberger was a freshman. Hite kept it as a junior and again as a senior, winning a competition over the summer with Roethlisberger, who shifted to wide receiver.
It wasn’t until Hite was in college at Division III Denison — and Roethlisberger was setting records at Miami (Ohio) — that he heard charges of nepotism, which he denies to this day.
“Playing for your dad, anybody who has ever done that, you don’t get any benefits of the doubt,” Hite said. “He didn’t want anyone ever thinking I got special treatment.”
Besides, Roethlisberger turned out to be a pretty fair receiver at Findlay. He finished the year with 57 catches and seven touchdowns.
“We get in the first game and we had a run call,” Hite said. “I look over, and Ben is standing out there being guarded by a 5-8 guy. We audibled, and I threw him a fade. The next play, same thing. They kept manning up, so I kept throwing to him. We did that the whole series. Half the time he caught it, half the time (the defense) was called for pass interference. That worked out fairly well for us.”
Roethlisberger played baseball, football and basketball in high school. His competitive nature also reared its head in the family basement.
“He’s the best pingpong player I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Ryan Imke, a high school teammate and currently Findlay’s principal. “He excelled athletically at whatever position he was put in. He just had that knack for being successful.”
In 1999, with his son off to college, Cliff Hite overhauled his offense to fit Roethlisberger’s strengths, installing a spread formation. Roethlisberger led Findlay to a 9-1 regular season and first-round playoff victory. He set state records by passing for 4,401 yards and 54 touchdowns while also rushing for seven. He had six touchdown passes in his first game, eight in another.
“At the time, nobody was throwing as many passes as we were,” said Imke, a senior tight end on that team. “We would joke about Ben’s uncanny ability to escape danger and make long passes down the field. We figured no way he could do that in college, but he did it in college. Then it was like, no way can he do that in the NFL. But, by golly, he did.”
Ryan Hite likes to think he did Steeler Nation a favor by limiting Roethlisberger’s exposure at quarterback in high school.
“I don’t think I did anything to hamper his growth or anything,” said Hite, who is the assistant athletic director for development at Bowling Green. “Maybe he would have been drafted by the Browns, and it would be easier for me to root for him. I always said I hoped he threw four touchdown passes and lost by three points when he played Cleveland.”
Redhawks royalty
After being the runner-up for Ohio’s Mr. Football Award — it went to Brandon “Bam” Childress of St. Peter Chanel — Roethlisberger remained in-state, accepting a scholarship to Miami (Ohio).
Following a redshirt season, Roethlisberger became a three-year starter for the Redhawks. In 38 games, he compiled 10,829 yards and 84 touchdown passes.
Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh, a Miami graduate, was special teams coordinator with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2002 when he visited his alma mater to scout a punter. He left more impressed about the strong-armed quarterback zipping the ball all over the field.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh,’” Harbaugh said. “I was so happy we had a quarterback at Miami. Little did I know how this was going to factor into my own life.”
After Harbaugh became Ravens coach in 2008, it took him five tries to beat Roethlisberger, who ended his career with a 14-7 record and wins in his final four games against Harbaugh’s teams.
In 2003, Roethlisberger was named Mid-American Conference Offensive Player of the Year and MVP. He also led Miami to its first bowl appearance since 1986 and its first bowl win in 28 years.
Miami lost its season opener to Iowa before Roethlisberger led the Redhawks to 13 consecutive wins. It was reminiscent of what he would do as a rookie the next year with the Steelers when he won his first 13 starts.
“From that point, he took it to a whole different level with his intensity,” said Ryne Robinson, a wide receiver on that Miami team who would play one season with the Carolina Panthers. “He took over the offense and made sure everybody was where they were supposed to be.”
Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi was the defensive coordinator on the 2003 Redhawks. With Roethlisberger running the offense, Narduzzi didn’t need to worry about being in low-scoring games. Miami scored at least 40 points in 11 of its 13 victories and no fewer than 33 following that season-opening loss to Iowa.
“It was obvious even back at Miami that Ben was an NFL talent,” Narduzzi said. “He looked and played like a pro quarterback in college. But what I remember most is how he carried himself and the kind of leader he was. It set the bar for our entire locker room. He expected a lot of his teammates but only because he expected even more from himself.
“We went 13-1 his senior year. We couldn’t wait to get a stop on defense and put the ball back in Ben’s hands. We outscored people like crazy. Points for and against was about as lopsided as it could be.”
Roethlisberger capped his redshirt junior season by throwing for 376 yards and four first-half touchdowns against Louisville in the GMAC Bowl.
“I sat in front of him on the plane ride home, and people were getting autographs,” said Austin Sykes, a Moon graduate who was a freshman wide receiver at Miami in 2003. “You knew he would be moving on to the pros. Watching him play, it was like watching a video game. He was next level and made it look easy out there. I was hoping the Steelers would draft him. We needed that quarterback who could get us over the hump.”
‘A marriage made in heaven’
Leigh Steinberg, Roethlisberger’s first agent, went into the 2004 draft thinking his client had a chance to go to the Steelers, who held the No. 11 pick, or the Buffalo Bills at No. 13. Cleveland, at No. 6, was another possibility.
It was just a matter of what would happen with Eli Manning and Philip Rivers, the two other members of what is considered a memorable 2004 quarterback class.
In his research, Steinberg determined the Chargers, who picked first, coveted Rivers, and the Giants, holding the fourth pick, wanted Manning. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. San Diego drafted Manning despite his vow that he would never play for the Chargers.
When it was the Giants’ turn on the board, Steinberg knew a trade with the Chargers was in play. He also recalled information relayed to him that morning. New Giants coach Tom Coughlin had called Roethlisberger’s college coach, Terry Hoeppner, on the eve of the draft.
“If you don’t see a trade done, we’re taking Ben,” Steinberg was told.
Steinberg was sitting with Roethlisberger and his parents in the green room at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. The Giants had 15 minutes to make their move.
“At the draft, when you have 15 minutes, it’s water torture time,” Steinberg said. “Drip, drip, drip. Every second seems like an hour. We’re sitting there and five minutes go by, 10 minutes go by and no trade. At this point, the whole table is pumped up believing Ben would go to the Giants even though I knew they loved Manning.
“Eleven minutes, 12 minutes, 13 … the anticipation rises. At about 14 and a half minutes, they announce the trade.”
Manning went to New York, Rivers went to San Diego, and Roethlisberger went back to waiting.
“It was like letting the air out of the balloon,” Steinberg said. “But minutes of disappointment led to a marriage made in heaven.”
The Browns bypassed the quarterback who grew up about two hours away from Cleveland in favor of tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. Buffalo never got its chance at unlucky No. 13. The Steelers, who passed on franchise quarterback Dan Marino two decades earlier, didn’t make the same mistake, taking Roethlisberger over offensive lineman Shawn Andrews.
As Roethlisberger walked to the podium after the pick was announced, he was wearing a black suit with a gold tie.
“It was meant to be that I was going to wear black and gold,” Roethlisberger said.
None of the Big 3 quarterbacks were expected to start right away. San Diego had Drew Brees and New York had Kurt Warner to bridge the gap. On the Steelers, Roethlisberger was third on the depth chart behind Tommy Maddox and Charlie Batch.
So, of course, Roethlisberger became the first member of his class to start. Batch headed to injured reserve with a knee injury, and Maddox sprained his elbow in the second game of the year.
Having Roethlisberger start so quickly wasn’t in the Steelers’ plans.
“Rivers and Manning came from big-time programs, and they had pedigrees,” former coach Bill Cowher recalled in July. “Ben came from the MAC. We had watched him play in camp, but we figured it was a great situation for him (to develop behind Maddox and Batch). … The guy I thought would sit for a while was starting.”
Cowher didn’t want to overwhelm the rookie when he replaced Maddox, so he scaled back the playbook.
“We wanted to make sure he was able to get us in and out of huddles and manage the game,” Cowher said. “He went from managing games to winning games. I was just amazed at not just his athleticism and size but his feel for the game. He could see the field better than anybody. He got comfortable outside the pocket. He was athletic. He wasn’t afraid to make throws. It was never too big for him.”
Roethlisberger set an NFL record by winning his first 13 starts, and the 15-1 Steelers advanced to the AFC championship game.
Roethlisberger led the Steelers back to the conference title game in 2005. This time, he got the Steelers over the hump by completing 21 of 29 passes for 275 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions in a 34-17 victory at Denver that sent the Steelers to Super Bowl XL.
The 21-10 win over Seattle that brought the franchise its one-for-the-thumb championship is best remembered for Jerome Bettis finishing his career by winning a championship in his hometown of Detroit. Roethlisberger threw two interceptions, no touchdowns and had a miserable 22.6 passer rating. It mattered little to Bettis, who remembered Roethlisberger’s promise from a year earlier that he would get the veteran running back to the Super Bowl if “The Bus” returned for one last ride.
“He kept his word,” Bettis said on his WPXI television show in January. “I retired a champion definitely because of Ben Roethlisberger.”
Building a legacy
Roethlisberger led the Steelers to another championship in 2008 and returned to the NFL’s grandest stage after the 2010 season.
Those appearances helped put Roethlisberger on the track to end up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Off the field, though, the young quarterback encountered his share of problems. There was a motorcycle accident in Pittsburgh during the 2006 season in which Roethlisberger wasn’t wearing a helmet.
Roethlisberger then missed the first four games of the 2010 season while serving a suspension for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy. It stemmed from two sexual assault accusations. Through never criminally charged, Roethlisberger settled an alleged 2009 incident at a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe, Nev. In March 2010, Roethlisberger was investigated for a sexual assault accusation at a Milledgeville, Ga., nightclub. Again, police filed no charges.
Upon returning after his suspension that season, Roethlisberger led the Steelers to the Super Bowl for the third time. He was unable to duplicate the magic from Super Bowl XLIII when he threw the last-minute, game-winning touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes in the right corner of the end zone. This time, a last-minute comeback fell short, and the Steelers lost to Green Bay, 31-25.
From his perspective as a backup quarterback, Batch said Roethlisberger did some of his best work on the field that season considering the scrutiny he faced off it.
“You saw more of a focus,” he said. “Not that he didn’t have it already, but it was having to prepare himself for everything that people were saying, everything that was behind it, what the perception was going to be. It’s hard to say you’re just going to focus on the field when all those things off the field are happening.”
Roethlisberger’s life became more grounded in the summer of 2011 when he married Ashley Harlan, a physician’s assistant. They are parents of three children — Benjamin Jr., Baylee and Bodie — and Roethlisberger recommitted to his Christian faith in 2017.
Upset with some unflattering things he heard from residents of his hometown following the sexual assault allegations, Roethlisberger ultimately made amends with Findlay. In 2017, he returned to be inducted into the Hancock County Hall of Fame — along with his sister, Carlee, a basketball and volleyball player.
Imke, who has been employed at the Findlay City School District for 18 years, said any disconnect between Roethlisberger and his hometown never carried over to the high school.
“Ever since he’s had an opportunity to play professionally, he’s been a constant advocate for Findlay athletics,” said Imke, who is in his fifth year as principal. “He’s done things for our youth football programs. Four years ago, when he did a celebrity softball event, he brought a bunch of Steelers back with him. His relationship with Findlay High School has been nothing but positive.”
One final ride
To Roethlisberger’s disappointment, he never led the Steelers back to the Super Bowl during his final 11 seasons. Despite never playing for a team with a losing record in 18 seasons, he only returned to the AFC championship game one more time, in 2016.
Roethlisberger went 3-7 in his final 10 playoff games, finishing on a four-game postseason losing streak. His 13 career playoff victories fell one shy of Terry Bradshaw’s franchise record, and he won only half as many championships as Bradshaw.
“To me, (wins) will always mean more than yards and touchdowns,” Roethlisberger said. “Wins because … I’m sure you can go back to my very first press conference. All I ever said I want to do is win, and that’s what is important to me.”
Roethlisberger watched some of his closest friends leave football after the home playoff loss to Cleveland that ended the 2020 season. Among them were McDonald and center Maurkice Pouncey.
“He decided to play another one despite having some major, major changes in the roster and the offensive line,” McDonald said. “I wondered why he was doing it. Was it for himself or the Steelers organization? He took it upon himself to take some of those young receivers, those young players on offense, under his wing. I sat back and thought, ‘He’s not doing this for himself. He’s doing it for the organization. He’s doing it for the offense, because he can go out and perform at a high level.
“He wanted to be part of something, a team he could push into the playoffs and be a competitor in the AFC. That was cool to see it come to fruition.”
Roethlisberger didn’t have the fairytale conclusion to his career that Bettis enjoyed. The Kansas City Chiefs took care of that in the wild-card round with a 42-21 victory.
Still, Roethlisberger had that magical night against Cleveland in the home finale when he was serenaded by the fans in a 26-14 victory that ensured an 18th non-losing season and kept the Steelers’ playoff hopes afloat.
He followed that by beating the Ravens and Harbaugh one final time to put the Steelers in position to return to the postseason.
“It didn’t end the way we wanted it to, but it’s a blessing to be able to play this game,” Roethlisberger said after the playoff loss. “I try to tell those guys how lucky we are that we get to play football for a living.”
Life after football
Roethlisberger will face some unexpected changes in retirement, McDonald said. He knows from experience, having left the game a year earlier to focus on his charitable passions. McDonald purchased a 130-acre farm in Ligonier and is using the land to host faith-based retreats for community leaders.
His endeavors only occupy a portion of his time, and he expects Roethlisberger to discover this in the coming months.
“I felt like I was lost,” he said. “I had no idea it would be as hard as it was. It was something I had to learn. I had to ask my wife for a lot of grace and forgiveness. Even though I had projects and a huge foundation, I found that there is a huge hole in my day that I didn’t know how to fill it or organize it.”
McDonald said he’s willing to be a sounding board for Roethlisberger as he begins to navigate life after football. Batch offered counsel as well.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” Batch said. “You miss the locker room, the guys you are around every day. I don’t think it’s the games or playing in front of 65,000 people, it’s the every-day interaction in the locker room. You get a chance to bust each other up, and I think that’s what you miss.”
The transition might be more difficult for Roethlisberger because he makes his full-time residence in Pittsburgh, Batch said. Other players, without ties to the city, can retreat to their hometowns when their playing days end.
“He’s in a similar situation as myself,” said Batch, a Steel Valley graduate. “You have to learn how to no longer be a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers.”
Roethlisberger gave McDonald a book titled “Half Time” that helped prepare the tight end for the next chapter in his life. It could provide a blueprint for the Roethlisberger’s own second act.
“It addresses those questions and answers you have when you get to that point in your life, the halfway point or ‘Half Time,’” McDonald said. “You do something for so long, it becomes your normal. It talks about what to do with the other half of your life. … What happens when you hit stop?”
For Roethlisberger, that could involve the father-son retreats he has planned in a project he is developing with his father.
“He expressed a desire to help people rekindle relationships,” McDonald said. “It’s similar stuff to the Boy Scouts. You’re in the wilderness hunting, learning how to make a fire. It lets dads reconnect with their kids. It sounded really neat when he shared it with me.”
Batch also expects Roethlisberger’s time with his children — Ben Jr. is the oldest at 9 — to dominate his free time.
“I think there will be sightings of him as a third-base coach for his sons or on the court if his kids get into basketball,” he said. “I think he will be involved, and I think he’ll try to stay out of the public eye.”
No matter what Roethlisberger tackles after he turns 40 next month, he’ll do it in Pittsburgh.
“This is home,” he said after beating the Browns one final time. “I was born in Ohio, but I live here. I’ll always be here.”
Joe Rutter is a TribLive reporter who has covered the Pittsburgh Steelers since the 2016 season. A graduate of Greensburg Salem High School and Point Park, he is in his fifth decade covering sports for the Trib. He can be reached at jrutter@triblive.com.
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