Former Steeler Ben Roethlisberger not shy in criticism of Mike Tomlin

Can we just say that we love retired Ben Roethlisberger? Big Ben isn’t shy about speaking his mind about the team now that he’s hung up his cleats and has turned his attention to his Footbahlin’ with Ben Roethlisberger podcast. In his latest episode, Roethlisberger reacted to the Steelers blowout loss to the Houston Texans and Big Ben didn’t hold back on his disapproval with the questionable fourth-down call that quarterback Kenny Pickett was injured on.

“You’re telling me you can’t get your running back that one foot,” Roethlisberger wondered. “That push play is batting 1.000 right now. Put big Naj back behind you and just push. That play is going to be talked about for a week at least. And your quarterback got hurt, it’s not even negative, it’s above negative.”

The play call itself was absolutely ridiculous. And it has put the bullseye squarely on offensive coordinator Matt Canada’s chest again this week. But as Roethlisberger astutely pointed out, this extends beyond just Canada.

Pittsburgh called the play out of a timeout and as Roethlisberger said, if that was the case, the play had to run through Tomlin and he was okay with it. After the game, Tomlin explained the call by saying the loss of left tackle Dan Moore and tight end Pat Freiermuth impacted the decision not to run, even though the team had been running the football well.