Breaking: Ben Roethlisberger is Out for the Season

Ouch. I have no particular love for the Steelers. But on word of this, you can consider me saddened, not gladdened. I take no pleasure in seeing any player lost to injury, no matter how much easier it makes the path to the AFC championship game. I believe in Karma. Or maybe I’m just being superstitious. Or a little stitious.

Call it what you will. The football world is just more interesting with Ben Roethlisberger in it. He’s a worthy adversary. One of the best quarterbacks of his generation. Who makes the league more interesting with his presence. His massive bulk bouncing off pass rushers and turning 3rd & 15s into 1st & 10s. Wearing enough ice in practices to supply a summer’s worth of Thornton family cookouts. His giant Easter Island head wearing that permanent frown, win or lose. This is a bad beat for Pittsburgh. But it’s a loss for us all.

It’s way too early for this, but the question is coming up any minute now about whether this is the end of the professional line for him. He’s done a Pennsylvania Hamlet act for the last three years at least, not committing to coming back for another season until deep into the spring. And it’s felt like every time he does give it another shot he’s about 3/4 as interested as he was the season before. I just would hate to see him go out like this, barely six quarters of football into his final year. Hopefully it won’t come to that. But we’ve got all season for the wild, uninformed speculation on that.

But if this is the end of the road for Roethlisberger, at least he left us this one last nugget to remember him by.

Get well soon, Big Ben. The football world and you have unfinished business.