COLUMBUS, Ohio — Some time after Ben Roethlisberger won his first Super Bowl, members of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ game-night operations crew gathered to brainstorm ideas for the new season. They were searching for novel ways to prompt venomous responses from the home crowd in key moments, particularly when opponents were taking free throws.
Finally, someone suggested flashing a picture of the Steelers’ franchise quarterback on the Jumbotron as the foul shooter stood at the line.
“One guy in the office said, ‘that’s perfect because we (expletive) hate him,” recalled longtime Cleveland sportscaster Andre Knott, who worked for the Cavs from 2002-08.
It was a game-ops ploy torn from the pages of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.” Big Brother whipping the masses into a lather with imagery of the traitorous Emmanuel Goldstein on the giant telescreens. Used sparingly, Cleveland fans roared their disgust at the sight of Roethlisberger in hopes of breaking the shooter’s concentration.
More than a decade later, Big Ben’s head shot on the scoreboard remains in the Cavaliers’ game-night rotation. Who says Roethlisberger has never done anything for Cleveland?
“He replaced the pain that John Elway inflicted on the Browns in the 1980s,” Knott said. “He became public enemy No. 1, the new-age Elway. You hated him, and you also had respect for him because he had the big arm and the big frame and we could not beat him.”
As @Espngreeny just referenced, the Cavs jumbotron showed Ben Roethlisberger, prompting fans to boo Golden St. pic.twitter.com/E42SrFtsyD
— Keyshawn, JWill & Max (@KeyJayandMax) June 9, 2016
Seventeen years after the Browns famously passed on Roethlisberger in the NFL Draft, he comes to Cleveland on Sunday for perhaps for the final time in a vitally important game for both teams.
The new-era Browns finally look like a contender as evidenced by their 48-37 thrashing of the Steelers in last year’s playoffs. But the Cleveland fanbase knows its tortured history against the Ohio native who delights in reminding them of the Browns’ draft-day gaffe in 2004.
“I’m glad that I’m not the most winning quarterback in their stadium history anymore,” said Roethlisberger, whose 11 victories at FirstEnergy Stadium had been the most until Baker Mayfield surpassed the total last season.
The 39-year-old quarterback is 23-2-1 as a starter against the Browns in regular-season play. The .885 winning percentage is second only to Tom Brady’s .914 mark against the Bills in NFL history for quarterbacks making at least 20 starts versus a single opponent.
The Browns have started 27 quarterbacks for at least one game since the Steelers picked Roethlisberger No. 11 overall in 2004, including the brother combination of Luke and Josh McCown. Cleveland’s decision to pass on Roethlisberger has contributed heavily to the firings of eight full-time Browns head coaches in that span.
“There’s some gamesmanship involved,” Cleveland sports talk show host Ken Carman said. “He’s trolled our fans in the past saying, ‘Oh, I’m from Findlay, Ohio and I grew up a Browns fan.’ No, he didn’t. He was not a Browns fan. . . . He wants to stick it to us every chance he gets, and I guess that’s only natural.”
The Roethlisberger saga in Cleveland is complex because the animosity isn’t targeted exclusively at the individual as it was with Elway and Michael Jordan, superstars who denied the city of sports titles until LeBron James and the Cavaliers ended a 52-year drought in 2016.
As Roethlisberger began to thrive with the Steelers and the Browns collapsed under the weight of dysfunction and so many false dawns, their failure to draft him became emblematic of a lack of competence at the top of the organization.
“I totally acknowledge how great Ben was, but he got to dance on the grave of a really crappy team for a long time,” said comedian Mike Polk Jr., the lifelong Browns fan who hung the nickname “Factory of Sadness” on FirstEnergy Stadium.
“I have an equal amount of respect for Ben and an equal amount of respect for ‘let’s take it with a grain of salt.’ Because you saw the management of this team. You saw the ownership. You saw the drafting. Is there anything more delicious than knowing that no matter how bad your team was — and the Steelers have rarely been bad since Ben was there — you at least got to play the horribly mismanaged Browns twice a year?”
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Ben Roethlisberger and Baker Mayfield meet after the Steelers' 38-17 win over the Browns Oct. 18, 2020 at Heinz Field.
Roethlisberger started bloodying the Browns before he ever played a down against them.
In the weeks leading up to the 2004 draft, franchise members flew to Oxford, Ohio on the owner’s private jet for a workout with the Miami University quarterback. The team’s top decision-makers, coach Butch Davis and general manager Pete Garcia, were among those who made the trip. They also brought along two young receivers, Frisman Jackson and Andre King to run routes and catch passes.
“He was a big guy, he had all the measurables for a quarterback,” King recalled. “Ben threw the ball with good velocity and a lot of accuracy.”
There was at least one incompletion — and it was painful.
Needing an extra wideout to run three-receiver sets, Garcia volunteered for duty. Unfortunately, one pass was deflected and it ricocheted into the general manager’s face, breaking his nose.
It was omen of things to come for Roethlisberger and the Browns.
“Yes, yes, yes,” said longtime Browns play-by-play man Jim Donovan laughing. “I remember the story.”
Donovan is one of several people with Browns ties who don’t think Davis seriously considered drafting a kid from the Mid-American Conference. In the days before the draft, Donovan said the former University of Miami coach did an interview with him and he never mentioned Roethlisberger as a first-pick possibility.
Davis was enamored with two former Hurricanes — defensive back Sean Taylor, who went No. 5 overall to Washington, and tight end Kellen Winslow Jr., who the Browns selected at No. 6 after trading up one spot with the Lions.
“Butch had a pattern in which he only took players that he coached at Miami, that he coached against at Miami or that he tried to recruit to Miami,” Donovan said. “That really was his draft board.”
Knott recently launched a podcast series entitled “Brownstown,” which chronicles the franchise’s history since its 1999 rebirth. It’s among Blue Wire Podcasts most popular downloads.
It’s impossible to tell the story of the modern Browns without delving into the Roethlisberger debacle. And while it’s revisionary history to say Cleveland fans were outraged on draft day by the snub of the Miami University quarterback, it didn’t take long for people to grasp the looming calamity.
Roethlisberger led the Steelers to a Super Bowl in his second season. They won another three years later.
King provides context to Roethlisberger’s incredible start, noting that he landed with an ideal franchise. Would he have had the same early success with the expansion Browns?
“He had so many good players around him,” said King, a Browns receiver for three seasons. “They could run the ball, they had a great offensive line and they were stout defensively. That helped him on his way to becoming a Hall-of-Fame quarterback.”
While Randy Moss and Daunte Culpepper brought attention to the MAC, Knott said it was the emergence of Roethlisberger that truly made the NFL realize it could draft future stars from the conference.
“Butch didn’t believe in a big, ol’ kid from Miami of Ohio,” Knott said. “He played for the wrong Miami, and Browns fans have been paying the price for it ever since.”
The Browns had added a stop-gap quarterback in Jeff Garcia through free agency in 2004. But for years, the organization didn’t invest its top draft pick in a quarterback, even in seasons when it had two first-round selections. After taking Tim Couch at No. 1 overall in 1999, they went all the way until 2018 before using their first pick again on Mayfield.
“They were trying to find a needle in the haystack that nobody else was searching for,” Carman said. “It was like they were trying to be smarter than everybody else. Brandon Weeden. Brady Quinn. Johnny Manziel. Colt McCoy. Charlie Frye. Cody Kessler. And all these guys came after not drafting Big Ben when they had the chance.”
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Former Browns offensive lineman John Greco distinctly remembers the conversation around the training facility in the days prior to the Nov. 15, 2015 game in Pittsburgh. Roethlisberger had been nursing a foot injury and the Steelers’ plan was to dress him as a backup and to start Landry Jones.
“We were talking about how the only way Ben was probably going to get in was if Landry peed down his leg or we ended up knocking him out of the game,” Greco said. “Wouldn’t you know, Landry gets hurt right away and here comes Ben off the bench.”
Roethlisberger set an NFL record for the most passing yards (379) by a quarterback who didn’t start the game. He threw for 286 yards and two touchdowns by halftime en route to a 30-9 victory at Heinz Field.
“A couple of weeks ago, Aaron Rodgers was taunting Bears fans, yelling, ‘I own you,’” Donovan said. “Ben could have said that about the Browns for a long time.”
Rodgers has engineered six game-winning drives to compile a 21-5 mark against the Bears, according to ProFootballReference.com. Brady has seven versus the Bills in going 32-3.
Roethlisberger ranks fourth all-time in game-winning drives with 48. Just three have come against Cleveland.
“Ben is like the monster from the movie ‘It Follows,’” Polk said. “It’s not fast or necessarily scary, but it’s just constantly coming for you. No matter what you do or how hard you fight it, it’s probably going to win out in the end.”
Roethlisberger’s mastery of the Browns is such that many of the losses run together in the minds of their fans. The most maddening aspect of his dominance, particularly in the first decade, was his strength, his elusiveness and his ability to keep his eyes down field as Browns' defenders chased him from the pocket.
He’s thrown 41 touchdown passes, 22 interceptions and registered a 94.1 passer rating in 27 career games against Cleveland.
“For a three- or four-year span, he totally demoralized the Browns’ franchise because they couldn’t pull him down,” Knott said. “Guys would get clean shots at him and they would just bounce off him like beach balls.”
Donovan recalls a late-season game in Cleveland when Roethlisberger had a Browns defensive lineman draped around his lower body. Unfazed, the quarterback stepped into a 56-yard touchdown pass to Mike Wallace.
“It was like the first minute of the game, and it was virtually over,” Donovan said of a 41-7 win in 2010. “ It was like let’s go out to the car, turn on a radio station that has Christmas music on and go home because this thing is over.”
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Ben Roethlisberger and James Conner cannot fall on the ball before the Browns recover it for a touchdown in last season's AFC Wild Card game at Heinz Field.
Knott can tell you the first time his young children heard their father shout a profanity out of sheer joy — Jan. 10, 2021 around 8:15 p.m. That’s when Maurkice Pouncey snapped the ball over Roethlisberger’s head and the Steelers’ quarterback didn’t fall on it or kick it out of the back of the end zone.
The play resulted in a quick Browns touchdown on the way to a stunning 28-0 first-quarter lead in the AFC Wild Card game.
“It was like ‘holy s**t,’” Knott recalled. “My kids’ eyes got really big. It was like, ‘Oh my God, dad has lost his mind.’ For so many years, Ben was the main villain in every nightmare in games with the Browns and Steelers. When he didn’t jump on that ball, I was like, ‘it’s (expletive) over.’ My wife looked at me and said, ‘go to the basement.’”
Donovan equated it to an aging Willie Mays misplaying a fly ball with the Mets in the 1973 World Series. Carman, 35, called the 48-37 triumph the most satisfying Browns win of his life.
“At the end of the game, Ben is sitting on the bench and he’s in tears,” Carman said. “I thought it was over for him. The Browns are getting ready to take on the Super Bowl champion Chiefs, and all week on our show we’re talking about whether the Browns just retired Ben Roethlisberger. I should have known better. I think he would let any other team retire him before the Browns.”
There’s much distain for Roethlisberger in Cleveland. There’s also deep-rooted appreciation. Donovan isn’t sure there’s a player on either side of the rivalry over the past 20 years that understands what it means to the fans more than Roethlisberger.
“He gets it, he has from the very beginning,” Donovan said. “There’s been so much turnover with the Browns over the years that I don’t think some players grasped the significance of it. . . . You would go to different players and say, ‘hey, it’s Steelers week,’ and they would say, ‘yeah, and I know the Dawg Pound will be barking,’ like they were reading off cue cards for one of those Baker Mayfield Progressive Insurance commercials.”
Roethlisberger hasn’t played in Cleveland since the 2018 season opener when he threw three interceptions at windswept FirstEnergy Stadium in a 21-21 tie.
Both age and the Browns’ organization are finally catching up to a quarterback who turns 40 in March. His lack of mobility and deep-ball accuracy has made for a difficult start to the 2021 campaign. A loss on Sunday would leave the Steelers in the AFC North basement with little margin for error in the season’s second half.
But nobody in Cleveland seems to be expecting an easy win, especially with Roethlisberger’s history against the Browns.
“For years, we never had a quarterback like Ben or Brady or Rodgers, who gave the team confidence they could pull out a big game,” Greco said. “As long as Ben Roethlisberger is wearing that uniform, the Steelers have a chance.”
Knott has been reminding family and friends all week that Sunday’s game falls on Halloween.
“Ben may come out of the grave one more time and hurt our feelings,” Knott said. “He’s inflicted so much pain on the organization that I’m not talking crap on him because I always feel like he has one more trick up his sleeve when it comes to playing the Browns.”
