By now, you've all seen the videos of Ben Roethlisberger throwing a football.
And you've heard everyone from Art Rooney II to Kevin Colbert to Mike Tomlin to Roethlisberger's teammates say without a doubt they feel the quarterback will return to the football field in 2020. Not only that, they feel he could be even better than he was the last time we saw him play.
He's feeling so good about his return that he had his beard trimmed last month -- something he previously said he would not do until he threw an NFL-type pass to a teammate again.
"He didn’t play last season, so his body, the rest of his body, got the year off. I think that’s part of it," Colbert said of his now 38-year-old quarterback earlier this year. "Anytime you repair anything with any kind of surgery, nobody knows at what point, you know when it happened, but what were the symptoms? Was his arm as strong as it had been? Who knows? I’m just optimistic that it could be better."
The Steelers feel Roethlisberger's elbow was an issue for the better part of the past year. In recent seasons, he'd been given Wednesdays off from throwing at practice during the regular season, and he would take every third day completely off at training camp. Elbow soreness and maintenance were often the reasons given for those days off.
It wasn't anything new for a player who had attempted 7,230 regular-season passes and probably 1,000 times that many over the course of his lifetime. But it was written off as the general soreness all throwers get over time.
There are three ligaments in the elbow, the ulnar collateral ligament, the radial collateral ligament and the annular ligament. According to a report from ESPN's Chris Mortensen last season, Roethlisberger tore them all, getting three ligaments in his elbow repaired.
There are different levels of repair, and Roethlisberger went to a specialist, Dr. Neal ElAttrache, a Mount Pleasant, Pa., native who practices in Los Angeles. Dr. ElAttrache's specialty is dealing with elbow issues, including tennis elbow and golf elbow. He's one of the best in the world at his craft.
That's maybe the most prominent reason why the common comparisons among longtime Steelers fans to what happened to Terry Bradshaw ring hollow. Those fans can recall Bradshaw slinging his final pass for a touchdown in 1983 against the Jets, then grasping his elbow and never coming back to play another game.
After the 1982 season, Bradshaw was experiencing elbow pain. But instead of informing the Steelers of the issue, he went to see a local doctor in Louisiana. That doctor decided Bradshaw needed surgery on his elbow. Bradshaw checked himself into the hospital under the alias "Thomas Brady" -- seriously -- and had the surgery. Instead of visiting a specialist such as ElAttrache. All without telling the Steelers.
Also, the advances in medicine from 1983 until 2000 -- particularly in orthopedics -- is night and day. Twenty-five years ago, ACL injuries took two years from which to return. Now, players routinely have the surgery and are back six months later. Tommy John surgeries in baseball -- the repair of the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow -- are so routine that some pitchers have them two or three times over the course of their careers, returning to the mound each time.
Elbow surgeries are rare among NFL quarterbacks. The only one in recent history to undergo a Tommy John was the Panthers' Jake Delhomme in 2007. Delhomme suffered his injury three games into that season but came back to play in 2008 at 33 years old. He led the Panthers to a 12-4 record that season, then settled in as a backup for the remainder of his career.
Delhomme was never nearly as talented as Roethlisberger, but one quarterback who was is Joe Montana.
The New Eagle, Pa., native, suffered an elbow injury in 1991 and tried to rehab it non-surgically before eventually opting for surgery. He came back at the end of the 1992 season at age 36 but was then traded to the Chiefs after that season, spending his final two seasons in Kansas City. Montana led the Chiefs to a 17-8 record in 25 starts in his final two NFL seasons, helping them to the AFC Championship in 1993.
“I tore the pronator off the bone,” Montana recently told USA Today's Jarrett Bell. “I don’t know if it’s anything like that or the ligament for Ben. The ligament is what killed me. I was back throwing later that year (in 1991), but there was a zing whenever I threw. The technology is so advanced these days, they can probably fix it to where it’s better than before. I don’t know the extent of his specific injury, but as long as he rehabs it, takes a serious approach to rehab, he’ll be fine."
Then, there's Peyton Manning. Manning underwent neck surgery -- a different part of the body but an important one -- in 2011, missing the entire season at age 35. The injury caused some nerve damage, with Manning losing some feeling in his fingers. The following year, he was released by the Colts and signed with the Broncos in 2012, playing four more seasons, going 45-12 as a starter and throwing 140 touchdown passes in 58 games. That includes a 55-touchdown season in 2013. He also led the Broncos to the Super Bowl twice, winning it once, before retiring at 39.
"He’s not a spring chicken, but if he stays with it and nothing happens that would cause a setback, he should be OK," Montana said of Roethlisberger. "I mean, you see so many people coming back from Tommy John surgery.”
That's part of what continues to give the Steelers hope regarding Roethlisberger's return.
"Rehabilitation in regard to the injury itself is going well. I hear nothing but positive reports from that standpoint," Tomlin said recently on a Steelers Nation Unite call. "There have been no bumps in the road. The fact that the injury and subsequent surgery happened so early in the season in 2019 is probably an asset to him and to us as we push into 2020. I think everybody is comfortable with where things are. We're excited about him and what he is going to do for us this year."
