Here is the part nobody puts in the Ben Roethlisberger first ballot Hall of Fame argument, and it’s the part that actually decides it. A guy needs 80 percent of a 50 person committee. 40 votes. Which means eleven people can sit in a room, say nothing, vote no, walk out, and never once have to tell you why. No record, no name attached, nothing… That’s the whole machine, and it just spit out a class of four and a class of five back to back while Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft both got left standing outside.
So when NFL dot com’s projection for 2027 came out last week without Ben in it, and with two tight ends in it, what exactly are we saying happened? That would be the first two tight end class in the history of the building, and Ben’s the guy who doesn’t fit.
If you don’t think Ben Roethlisberger is a first ballot Hall of Famer you have negative ball knowledge.
64,088 yards. 418 touchdowns to 211 picks. A 93.5 rating, two rings, three Super Bowls, Rookie of the Year, 18 years with one team, never a losing season, and more 500 yard passing games than anybody in NFL history.
And that’s the short version. He won 165 regular season games. He’s got a .710 winning percentage as a starter, fourth best ever among guys with a hundred starts. He was the youngest starting quarterback to ever win a Super Bowl and then he went and won a second one on a throw to Santonio Holmes with 35 seconds left that people STILL pull up on YouTube for no reason at all. He’s the only quarterback who has ever thrown six touchdowns in back to back games. 18 years, one team, longest any quarterback has ever done it. Who’s doing that now? Nobody is ever doing it again.
The All-Pro Thing Is Not The Gotcha You Think It Is
And I know the real argument, no first team All-Pro, no MVP. Over who? Brady, Manning, Rodgers and Brees were all breathing at the same time. Pick the year!
Go ahead and actually try it. 2007, Brady throws 50 touchdowns. 2014, Ben leads the entire league in passing yards and stacks the two six touchdown games back to back, and Rodgers goes 38 and 5 and takes the MVP anyway. 2018, Ben leads the league in yards again with 5,129, and Patrick Mahomes throws 50 in his first year as a starter. There isn’t a year. There was never going to be a year, because four inner circle Hall of Famers were clogging one lane for a decade and a half…
Pro Football Reference has a formula for this. It’s called the Hall of Fame Monitor, it weighs championships and Pro Bowls and All-Pros and the milestones all together, and a 100 is about what an average modern inductee scores. Ben scores a 100.28. Ahead of Bradshaw, ahead of Aikman, ahead of Kurt Warner, ahead of Bart Starr. All four of them are already IN. So what’s the number he was supposed to hit?
But that’s never the argument I get. It’s always the other thing.
Ben Roethlisberger And Adrian Peterson Are On The Exact Same Ballot
Okay. Pro Football Network dropped their 2027 projection this week. Adrian Peterson at ONE, Ben at two, and the reason they gave was voters getting apprehensive about his record, with Kraft and Belichick cited as the proof that it happens.
AP pled guilty to a DWI in March. Five months ago. He’s also got a second case out of Texas from last October that is still pending, and I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know how that one ends. Ben’s is 2009 and 2010, two allegations, no criminal charge ever filed in either one, one civil suit settled, one district attorney who declined to prosecute, and a four game suspension.
And I think AP is first ballot! No debate, put him in, one of the best backs to ever do it. 14,918 yards, the 2,097 season, an MVP, four first team All-Pros. He’s a Hall of Famer on Tuesday and he’s a Hall of Famer on Sunday, and I’m not moving off that no matter what happens in a Texas courtroom.
So what’s the rule?
Because I already know what some of you are typing, and it’s the one honest version of this, which is that a DWI and what Ben got accused of are not the same thing and voters can weigh them differently. Fine! I’ll take that one seriously, I really will. Then write it down. Put it in the bylaws, which right now say the exact opposite, that the only thing a selector is supposed to consider is what the man did in professional football. One of the actual voters called that bylaw outdated in print. The Hall itself threatened in January to throw people off the committee over bylaw violations. So either the rule means something or it’s decoration on a wall!
What it can’t be is a thing that shows up for one guy on a ballot and evaporates for another guy on the same ballot in the same class in the same room on the same night.
The Ben Roethlisberger First Ballot Hall of Fame Window Is 2027 Or Never
And this isn’t a wait your turn situation, either. Tom Brady hits the ballot in 2028. Then it’s Rodgers. The quarterback door in Canton is about to have a line out of it for a decade, and the new structure cuts 15 finalists down to 10 down to 7 before anybody votes on five. Frank Gore is third all time in rushing and he’s still waiting. Antonio Gates waited. Jason Witten’s sitting there too. Great players wait all the time, and how often is it because somebody stood up and made an actual case against them? Almost never. It’s because eleven guys got quiet, and not one of them ever had to explain it.
So pick one. Either that stuff counts and you’ve got a problem with your own number one guy, or it doesn’t and Ben walks in. You don’t get both.
