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Originally Posted by matskralc
In the 5 games the Steelers lost this year:
20-23 New England at home: 79 yards rushing. Roethlisberger 12-28 for 216 and 2 TD.
17-23 Jacksonville at home: 73 yards rushing. Maddox 11-28 for 154, 1 TD, 3 INT.
13-16 @ Baltimore: 70 yards rushing. Maddox 19-36 for 230, 1 TD, 1 INT
7-26 @ Indianapolis: 86 yards rushing. Roethlisberger 17-26 for 133, 1 TD, 2 INT.
31-38 Cincinnati at home: 95 yards rushing. Roethlisberger 29-41 for 386, 3 TD, 3 INT.
The Steelers live and die by the run, quite simply. Their passing game is rendered fairly ineffective if they cannot set it up with the run. Roethlisberger just isn't that good.
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Constant conjunction does not equal causality. It's a possibility that the reason the Steelers had fewer than 100 rushing yards in those game was because they were trailing, not vice versa. Teams run more when they are ahead. Notice they had 70 or more yards on the ground in each of them and put up 20+ points in 2 of 3 losses in which Big Ben started. They averaged 3.4 yards per rush in all three losses, which is by no means getting shut down. It's one 13 yard gain from a 4.0 ypc average. NE averaged 2.7 in the game and Indy 4.0. Not a big advantage on the ground for the opponents.
Ben put up almost 8 YPA vs. the Pats and over 9 vs. the Bengals. I wouldn't say he was the reason they lost. I'd be more inclined to look at the 23 and 38 points that the other team scored.
I agree with you that the majority of Pittsburgh's success is the run game, but you can't write off Big Ben and just say he's ineffective. He was quite effective versus both New England and Cincinatti--about as effective as one could expect a QB to be when playing from behind and facing nickel defenses and blitzes. But it's kind of hard to win when the opponent scores 38 points in 26:42 TOP.