Big Ben Denies That He's Injured, Nobody Believes Him

by Ryan Wilson

If you're one of those people who believe Ben Roethlisberger's recent play has been hampered by a bum shoulder, a bruised throwing hand, so on and so forth, this should come as happy news: the Steelers quarterback reports that he is not injured.

Pretty amazing news given that he hardly practiced last week, and, more to the point, his performance against the Colts on Sunday suggested that he was anything but healthy. To back up his words, Big Ben even threw a ball 50 yards in the air at Wednesday's practice, before explaining why the Steelers didn't go deep against a pretty mediocre Indy pass defense.

"The reason we were checking the ball down a lot is because it was a Cover-2 defense. They were dropping everybody deep. The underneath stuff was wide open," Roethlisberger said. "A lot of why we threw the ball and where we threw the ball was determined by them."

Yes, "wide open" save the two occasions when Roethlisberger threw passes directly to Keiwan Ratliff and Tim Jennings. To the larger point, though, if Big Ben's physically healthy, does that mean his recent struggles are strictly above-the-neck-related? That's a bigger problem, I'd think, because sore arms heal a lot quicker than sore brains.

Still, despite all the gnashing of teeth in Western Pennsylvania, the Steelers are 6-3. If Pittsburgh can pull out a victory against San Diego this Sunday, they'll have Cincinnati next Thursday, and then a 10-day layoff before heading to New England.

So, yeah, it could be a lot worse.

Big Ben Denies That He's Injured, Nobody Believes Him originally appeared on NFL FanHouse on Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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