Brandon Marshall anyone

[skinsfan69]

[quote=GTripp0012;563942]Thing is, Ben may never win another SB the rest of his career, and he still might end up as a legitimate, sure-fire hall of famer. However, suggesting he's already to the point where he transcends the other players on the field to win games is a gross exaggeration.

Let's face it, for the first two years of Roethlisberger's career, he wore unbelievably large training wheels. He was very, very good in the plays that he was asked to run those years, but he was rarely asked to carry the team. Maybe a drive here and there, but he wasn't the leader of the 2004-2005 Steelers, he was just a key component in their machine who was less mistake prone than Tommy Maddox.

Then, when they took the training wheels off, he kind of floundered like any young quarterback asked to lead. He sandwiched a pro bowl season in between two below average seasons. I don't know what that means. QB rating had him over 100+ in 2007, but his TD total was inflated by a lack of a goal line running game. He had his best season as a pro in 2007, but it wasn't some historic, pro-bowl year. It was merely the best he's done.

Look, the guy is an 8.1 Y/A playoff quarterback with an 87 rating. Those are excellent numbers. More importantly, his playoff performance is NOT out of line with his regular season performance. It's not like he goes to a totally different level in the playoffs. He's always been good. Of course, these very good numbers are only a small step above where Campbell is now. Given a small increase in his offensive environment, Campbell's is arguably already at this level.[/quote]

As I've mentioned before some QB's you just can't judge them by rating, comp. % and so on. Ben is one of those guys. For the most part he gets the job done when it matters. It may not look pretty but he makes enough plays for Pittsburgh's offense. I don't think he's an upper tier NFL Qb but right now he doesn't have to be. At this point he's a better QB than JC.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by skinsfan69

As I've mentioned before some QB's you just can't judge them by rating, comp. % and so on. Ben is one of those guys. For the most part he gets the job done when it matters. It may not look pretty but he makes enough plays for Pittsburgh's offense. I don't think he's an upper tier NFL Qb but right now he doesn't have to be. At this point he's a better QB than JC.

Ben's had a pretty impressive early career. I wasn't really arguing that he's not better than Campbell, because the question wasn't even posed. I suggested that the gap between them is smaller than one would be led to believe by what is read and spoken about the two of them. If the price on Ben is 100 million, and the price on Campbell is 60 million, I'd take JC at the reduced price.

The only thing is, that Ben is coming off the least productive season of his career, statistically. I realize he "got it done" and I also don't really care. I saw him in the playoffs, and he was more like his old self than he looked to be in the regular season. With the Ben who showed up in the playoffs, you can win a whole bunch of games with a mediocre defense. With the Ben who played the 2008 regular season behind an inconsistent OL and WR targets, having the No. 1 (or close to No. 1) defense was a downright necessity to win more games than they lost.

We can wax poetic about the 3-4 games that Ben led drives to win in the final minutes last year, but if he had the 2008 Redskins defense instead of the Steelers defense--and the Redskins weren't a chopped liver defensive team--he's not in any of those games to win it at the end. He's got a 7-9 non playoff team instead of an eventual super bowl champion. And to put that in perspective, that would have been the second time in Big Ben's career that he would have failed to go .500.

The defense makes a huge difference in how he is perceived. And in 2008, second half specifically, our defense was a detriment to how Campbell was perceived. The phrases "Jason Campbell" and "poor second half" have appeared all over the internet, but Campbell was one of two guys on the offense who executed a higher percentage of the time in the second half of the year than in the first half. He just got no help.

I'm unconvinced that Ben will have a stronger career than Campbell, although if JC doesn't start having some 7.5-8.0 YPA seasons, he's never going to catch Big Ben, in my mind.