• Please be aware we've switched the forums to their own URL. (again) You'll find the new website address to be www.steelernationforum.com Thanks
  • Please clear your private messages. Your inbox is close to being full.

Big Ben question

M

maowv

Well-known member
Contributor
Joined
Oct 14, 2014
Messages
406
Reaction score
727
Points
93
Ok, now that we've reached the end, I have to ask.

Does anyone else think his throw mechanics were different after the elbow reconstruction? Not being critical but for any of you who threw the ball in your younger days, you'll get this question.

2018 and before. Ben never really threw the ball "over the top" like a Tom Brady throwing motion, he was always more of a 3/4 sidearm type motion but my eyes say his arm angle was higher before the elbow surgery.

Post elbow reconstruction, his arm angle seemed lower, with his hand placement more under the ball and arm angle more sidearm. Just me? Did my eyes just not remember his throw motion after the year off?

If I'm right and his arm angle did change, that lower side arm slinging motion is always going to be less powerful than a more vertical arm motion. Could be partially responsible for the loss of velocity and power in his arm. Did he alter that motion as a result of his elbow injury? I have no answers, just questions but to my eyes, his arm was nowhere close to what it was pre-injury. I don't think he ever came back with the same arm strength.

Anyway, just curious what others saw.
 
I thought his lower body is more of what failed him. He didn't have great footwork and couldn't make those off-platform passes anymore and he couldn't extend plays like he used to.
 
It is all about the angle of the dangle.
 
Ben’s game was always run around and hang on to the ball until a DB lost coverage. As he got older, the legs went away. Since he was never a pocket passer, he couldn’t stand there and throw.
 
MT~Forged said:
Ben’s game was always run around and hang on to the ball until a DB lost coverage. As he got older, the legs went away. Since he was never a pocket passer, he couldn’t stand there and throw.
Click to expand...
I disagree with the notion he wasn't a pocket passer. Ben could do it all just because he was extend the play capable didn't make him pocket incapable. He could stand in there and throw darts. His O-lines often challenged that capable. At the end his failing lower extremities threw off his mechanics limiting him.
 
slashsteel said:
I disagree with the notion he wasn't a pocket passer. Ben could do it all just because he was extend the play capable didn't make him pocket incapable. He could stand in there and throw darts. His O-lines often challenged that capable. At the end his failing lower extremities threw off his mechanics limiting him.
Click to expand...
This is all true, but yes, his throwing motion also did change, dramatically. The OP's eyes arent lying to him.
 
slashsteel said:
I disagree with the notion he wasn't a pocket passer. Ben could do it all just because he was extend the play capable didn't make him pocket incapable. He could stand in there and throw darts. His O-lines often challenged that capable. At the end his failing lower extremities threw off his mechanics limiting him.
Click to expand...
He was a do it all, most don't realize, but his career completion % was actually a tad higher than Brady's career comp% going into this season.
 
Coryea said:
He was a do it all, most don't realize, but his career completion % was actually a tad higher than Brady's career comp% going into this season.
Click to expand...


So many are looking for down side of BEN when in reality he was a dang GREAT qauterback. A lot give t*yb*y all the benifits of the doubt even though he was a cheating ******* yet cut short BEN.

Thanks Coryea for bringing this to our attention.




Salute the nation
 
I noticed it especially when the first vids of him coming back and throwing agian.. He looked odd to me.

But im just a guy who watches him on TV.

So yeah i think youre right.
 
PolamaluFanForever43 said:
I thought he looked different too. Either way he is one of the all time greats to ever do it. Nobody will be able to come close to filling his shoes.
Click to expand...


The one accolade that really stands out is the 13-0 regular season starting ROOKIE record. I truly have doubts that will ever be replicated. I don't want to hear it was a run offense and Cowher coddled him bullshit. Ben was so accurate that and efficient that teams had to take away the pass or be killed by it. Yes, the run game definitely a big asset but BEN was one as well.


Salute the nation
 
If you watch his "comeback" video he actually talks about his motion being different post surgery due to not needing to adjust it due to pain. So I'd say yes, he did adjust it.

Joe
 
I don’t think strength was the problem because very often when he missed he was overthrowing receivers.
 
slashsteel said:
I disagree with the notion he wasn't a pocket passer. Ben could do it all just because he was extend the play capable didn't make him pocket incapable. He could stand in there and throw darts. His O-lines often challenged that capable. At the end his failing lower extremities threw off his mechanics limiting him.
Click to expand...
Yep.....you don't put up the numbers Ben has without the ability to throw from the pocket over an 18 year span.
 
Drink IRON City said:
The one accolade that really stands out is the 13-0 regular season starting ROOKIE record. I truly have doubts that will ever be replicated. I don't want to hear it was a run offense and Cowher coddled him bullshit. Ben was so accurate that and efficient that teams had to take away the pass or be killed by it. Yes, the run game definitely a big asset but BEN was one as well.


Salute the nation
Click to expand...
It seemed that Ben put up 90% of his stats in the first half of games...then we just pounded the ball in the second half of games and team couldn't stop it.
 
You don't need or in my opinion want a running qb. What you want is a play extender. Ben was a play extender most of his career. When that diminished he had to become a short of the chain thrower. The last year they won the SB the oline wasn't this bad but damn near. But he could move and slide and make it work.
 
I think that adapting our offense to a quick passing offense says more about the state of our offensive line than it does about Ben's diminishing ability to scramble. I never thought it made sense to say 'Ben wasn't adaptable' -- really I always thought just the opposite was true. His offenses have evolved from a complete run oriented one (with a great OL) to a pass oriented one (with an OK OL), to a deep pass oriented one (with an OK OL), back to a pass oriented one (good OL), to what we had this past year (arguably the worst OL in NFL, worst playcalling in NFL with only Cleveland as a rival here).

Ben was kept as a stopgap for the inability to assemble an OL after losing basically an entire starting OL in one offseason. And really, who else could you have had behind THAT OL that could have performed any better? Maybe a running threat QB could have helped this year, but one was never available and we have none on our roster.

If I were to criticize Ben for anything, it would be for his lack of commitment to sell the play action pass. When he did, it seemed to work very well. But then it just seemed to go away. With the poor or undominant OL play, I always thought selling a play action pass would be the best thing he could do for himself. But for some reason it never seemed to be a priority. That was one part of his game that I always thought should have been a higher priority, especially towards the end of his career.
 
Last edited:
There is no doubt he regressed a lot over his last 20 or so games. Arm strength and zip wasn't there at all. And he rarely challenged the middle of the field anymore. Even his bombs down the sidelines were inconsistent (at best) and required a fairly large windup.

I mean, in my opinion, he has absolutely nothing left in the tank. I mean, if he rests a whole year, and is throwing around for fun, the arm might look good. But to throw for a regular season? Practices and games? Not a chance.

Hell, I don't think he was practicing at all over the last three seasons. Numerous reports said he would sit out Wednesday or Thursday practices. He was like a pitcher that need 6 days rest between starts. All of that matters. Every one of his WR's is 5 years in the league or less and he BARELY practiced with them.

Believe me, I wish he had a superman arm like Brady (I don't know how that guys arm isn't falling off) but when things got bad for Roethlisberger, it fell off pretty quick.

This offense was BRUTAL to watch now for three seasons. I mean bottom five in the league bad. Both with and without Roethlisberger EXCEPT for 10 weeks after his surgery (the 11-0 start to last season, where the offense was okay). Like I said, he took a whole year off and sort of looked okay (even though his YPA in 2020 was only 6.3 - which is horrendous) but that last all of 10 weeks before his arm was likely really not working right again.

And yes, it's not ALL his arm. His legs matter. His core matters. It was a complete degradation of his entire throwing motion over years. It happens.
 
I disagree that Ben was not getting it done at the end. Of course he wasn't what he was 10 years ago, but that was his legs, not his arm. If Ben had what he had when he came into the league he would have had a good shot at another super bowl at the end. Solid D, with a line in front of him, with some coaching. Hell, they snuck into the playoffs with a trash OL and erratic defense.
 
Ben was still making throws all over the field in the end. Sure, he didn't have the strength he did 10 years ago or even before his surgery but he didn't have a noodle arm - far from it. The only way we came back and won the games we did was because Ben was throwing it 10, 20, 30+ yards down the field instead of to the line when Canada was doing his plays at the beginning of games.
 
Ben will never get credit for just how complete of a quarterback he was. In a lot of ways, he was the middle ground in the transition from the last generation to the current generation. Pocket passer, running QB, game manager, big play maker, Xs and Os football and playground football ... he was ALL of those things and NONE of those things. Over his career he really fit no mold outside of the prototypical size. No matter what he was doing he was a winner that was tough as nails, had tons of passion and a pump fake that made DBs crap their pants. A true football player, if you will.
 
To me the biggest compliment you could give Ben is he is one of only a handful if not less that could have succeeded at the same level in other eras. Most of the best of today simply would not have made it in the 70s or 80s or 90s including Brady. Ben's game would have been just as good.
 
He has a different throwing motion for sure AND also had poor lower body mechanics towards the end (and an ever present awareness that he probably couldn’t step up to where a pocket should be unless he wanted to be greeted by an untouched LB coming up the middle full speed like a Mac truck)

The accumulation of lower body wear and tear/injuries over his career was very evident the last 2 years and was likely more to blame imo

But yeah, definitely things changed
 
In the chiefs game it looked like he was throwing a shot put to be at times. I think he had plenty of zip still but lost some accuracy. I think most was knees / legs. Ben can barely move around now. I just hope he is able to enjoy healthy time with his kids.
 
Ben was woefully misused here… we virtually marino’d him…

First off his first few years they used him as a game manager, which made sense as a rookie and in 05 behind that defense, but tgenntgey didn’t really give him a bigger role until 08…
in 06 they played him while he was obviously still recovering from that accident in the first half of the season… his arm strength was iffy… it was counterproductive
In 07 Tomlin continued using the whiz offense with arians running it but had no backup option for FWP

In 08 we finally moved to a passing offense, only we did so with an olinethat wasnt good at the finesse blocking scheme arians wanted… we also basically removed all short passes that weren’t bubble screens from the game… the next few years ben would exist on extended broken plays and arians brilliant deep routes… the few times he did do fast short timing passes his passer rating was absurdly high, but instead of adapting that to an efficient offense we let him get pummeled behind that terrible oline and gave him a mediocre run game

By the time we moved to haley and rebuilt the oline correctly and actually got a run game, our d collapsed from neglect… by the time we rebuilt it we let immature foolishness tear the offense apart, then we gave him a terribly planned offense forctge last three years of his career



Honestly if the rumors of Brady retiring are true, it wouldn’t surprise me if BA tries to get Ben there next season
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top