Rather than repeat what I had already written, I decided to look at the Final Offensive results for the season. I was astonished to see how much the numbers had slipped. I figured that there would be some slip in statistics with Ben Roethlisberger going down to injury, but the numbers I found most interesting were Ben Roethlisberger's statistics Post Injury and how much Ben Roethlisberger played a part in the Offensive numbers of the Pittsburgh Steelers taking a nose dive. He was definitely not the same QB from an efficiency standpoint. The decision making seemed sluggish and slow and the accuracy just wasn't there. Granted he didn't often get great help from his Wide Receivers dropping passes like they were laced with HIV, but it wasn't enough for his numbers to fall like they did.
Here's a Statistical Graph I threw together looking at Ben Roethlisberger's statistics Prior to his injury (up to and through the Kansas City Chiefs game) and Post Injury :
Comp.%
Rate
TD%
INT%
Y/A
3rd %
RZ TD %
TOP
Avg Pts P/G
YPG
Pre-Injury
66.1%
100.0
5.38%
1.26%
7.2
51.3%
53.3%
34:40
23.9
254.1
Post-Injury
56.4%
89.7
6.76%
3.01%
7.3
32.7%
62.5%
27:54
20.5
244.5
The Tale of 2 QB's. Pre-Injury, Ben Roethlisberger is an Efficient QB. His Completion % is nearly 10% higher, his Rating is 11 points higher and more importantly his INT Percentage was a lot lower. Ben hadn't seen an INT% in the 3's in years. 3trd Down Percentage was astonishing. Yeah that's right, I used the word astonishing because that is one hell of a dip. There will be some people that would want to blame Todd Haley for that but if you're going to blame him for a 4 game span of abusive 3rd % numbers, then he should be commended for a 9 game span of 3rd Down % numbers that were at the top of the league.
Top be honest, the main explanation was Ben wasn't the same QB he was prior to his injury. Some numbers remained good or better like Red zone TD scoring which remained far ahead of 2011's woeful 50% and as a whole finished at 55%, the highest total for the Offense in 4 seasons.
The most important stat however was the average score per game was down by 3 points. Let me say this to be fair though and this is something people should take note of, of the 13 games Ben played in, we scored less than 23 points just 4 times. The Defense wasn't scoring points for the Offense so this is pure Offensive scoring. By comparison, the Steelers scored less than 23 points in 8 of their 16 games in 2011 and that is why Bruce Arians was ultimately fired. What's interesting here is that despite his efficiency going to the crapper and Ben's Int % numbers skyrocketing Post-Injury, the Offense scored enough points in 3 of 4 games to win had the Defense not given 20 or more points themselves.
Another thing to look at was that Ben Roethlisberger's efficency numbers Pre-Inury are near career best, so to reiterate my Blog Post looking at Ben Roethlisberger's stats prior to his injury..
Comp.%
Rate
TD%
INT%
Y/A
3rd%
RZ TD%
AVG Pts P/G
YPG
Pre-Injury
66.1%
100.0
5.38%
1.26%
7.2
51.3%
53.3%
23.9
254.1
Career Best
66.6%
104.1
7.90%
1.30%
8.9
47.01
62.5%
23.6
288.5
What people need to take into consideration and this is something that nobody has done, is that, this was a brand new Offense not just for Ben Roethlisberger but for the entire Offense. A lot of Ben's career best totals came in 2007, Bruce Arians' first year as OC, but he was still using Bill Cowher's playbook. Him and Ben just streamlined it. Ben Roethlisberger never had to learn a new Offense while he was under Bruce Arians. When Mike Tomlin and Bruce Arians too over, Ben was heading into his 4th year of familiarity and comfort with the existing offense. The fact that Ben was able to produce like he did prior to his injury while he and the rest of his teammates on Offense were operating from a new playbook and terminology that they weren't exactly comfortable with is pretty remarkable.
What else is remarkable is the fact that when Ben came back from injury, the very things that he was improving on under Todd Haley's offense had evaporated.
When Todd Haley was hired some speculated that it was because Art Rooney wanted to run the ball more. That didn't happen. Perhaps that was the goal and the Steelers had a few games where they ran the ball really well before injuries on the Offensive Line and with Ben Roethlisnerger took over. The other thing that was speculated about Todd Haley coming in was that Ben was sacked too much under Bruce Arians. Now, I've disputed this before, that Ben's sack % numbers had been down the last 2 years under Bruce Arians behind a rag tag Offensive Line and were better than they were during the Bill Cowher years behind an Offensive Line that was often bragged about. However, hits are hits, sacks are sacks and when Ben drops back to pass as much as he does, his Sack% still needs to look more like Tom Brady's that it was. Ben was able to bring his Sack % down to that realm prior to his injury. Post-Injury was another story. Here's Ben's Sack % numbers :
Sack %
Pre-Injury
5.38%
Post-Injury
8.27%
Ben was sacked often after he came back from injury. This is mostly due to the fact that the right side of the Offensive Line contained 2 Rookies with limited to zero experience in 3rd stringer/Career Practice Squader Kelvin Beachum and 1st round pick, rookie David DeCastro. LG was filled in by Ramon Foster at this time who had played at RG for most of the season, moving to a position he was uncomfortable with. Playing with ribs that are still broken and a bad shoulder, there's no doubt that mentally Ben was a little uneasy back there. It reminded me of the 2006 season when Ben was playing under "questionable" health and we saw career lows in Completion Percentage and Passer Rating and a high in Int %. Ben's Post-Injury results had the same feel but with a QB a little more mature with the game.
So, was Ben Roethlisberger healthy enough to come back and play in 2012? To an extent, yes he was. 3 of 4 games leading his Offense to 24 points, which is more than enough to win if your Defense is playing at a higher enough caliber or not dealing with massive secondary injuries and age concerns themselves. However, he was far from being the same QB he was prior to his injury and the results from that statistically combined with the 3 games in which Byron Leftwich and Charlie Batch carried the torch, dragged down the Offenses overall numbers. A little bit better health amongst QB's, the Offensive Line and WR's and RB's holding onto balls and we're talking about a vast increase in Offensive Production.
What does this mean for the future? It means that Ben Roethliserger and the rest of the Offense under Todd Haley's offense, with more familiarity is only going to get better and more potent... provided that we can get some sort of break from the "Healthy Gods".