But now, thanks to Pro Football Focus, Roethlisberger has an interesting stat on his side. Anybody who wants to claim the Patriots have owned the Steelers because Tom Brady is so much better than Roethlisberger needs to dig deeper for legitimate arguments.
NFL QB RANKINGS: Why Big Ben is in the second tier
PFF’s Ben Linsey recently published a list of what he calls “NFL team-killers” — basically the one opposing player who has been the biggest headache for each NFL team since 2006 (the PFF era). They are defined in the article as “the players who have played a minimum of 300 snaps against a given team and picked up the highest overall grade.”
As for the player in the entire NFL who has hurt the Patriots most since 2006? Yep. No. 7 from Pittsburgh, credited with a 90.5 overall grade against New England.
Here is PFF’s explanation:
Based on passer rating, Roethlisberger’s best career game against the Patriots was actually his first. As a rookie in 2004, Big Ben completed 18 of 24 passes for 196 yards, two touchdowns and a rating of 126.4. It just so happens that the teams’ rematch in the playoffs that season was one of Roethlisberger’s worst career games against New England — 14 of 24 passing for 226 yards, 2 TDs, 3 INTs and a rating of 78.1.
Here are all of Big Ben’s games against the Patriots, including playoffs.
- playoffs
RANKING BEST NFL RIVALRIES:Steelers, Patrios both have new top enemies
For what it’s worth, the inverse in this exercise — the Patriot who has hurt the Steelers most since 2006 — is now-retired tight end Rob Gronkowski.
“Gronkowski utterly dominated his matchups with the Steelers,” Linsey writes. “He was targeted 51 times and brought in 41 of those passes for 685 yards and eight touchdowns. No matter which metric you look at Gronk is up near the top but most impressive is his passer rating when targeted — a perfect 158.3. Can’t get any better than that.”
This is a pretty cool way for PFF to utilize its metrics. The entire list is worth a read.
