When you think of the great quarterback battles of the 2000s and 2010s, Tom Brady vs. Ben Roethlisberger doesn’t always get top billing.
But make no mistake - those matchups were heavyweight bouts. Two of the AFC’s most successful franchises, led by two future Hall of Famers, clashing year after year with playoff implications often hanging in the balance.
Brady and Roethlisberger crossed paths plenty during their overlapping careers - 23 years for Brady, 18 for Big Ben - and while Brady typically came out on top in the win column, he never underestimated the guy in black and gold. In fact, in a recent interview with NFL on FOX, Brady gave Roethlisberger some serious flowers for one specific part of his game: his ability to create magic when things broke down.
“The best guy I saw do it my entire career was Ben Roethlisberger,” Brady said. “There’s nobody that made more unstructured plays outside of the pocket - big plays, scramble plays - to his receivers than Ben Roethlisberger. Ben was absolutely a magician back there.”
That’s high praise coming from arguably the greatest quarterback of all time. And it hits on what made Roethlisberger such a unique challenge for defenses.
He wasn’t just hard to bring down - he was nearly impossible to contain once he broke the pocket. Defensive coordinators could draw up the perfect blitz, get pressure, flush him out… and still watch him shrug off a would-be sack and fire a 25-yard dart downfield.
It was backyard football at its finest, and Roethlisberger made a career out of it.
While Brady’s game was built around timing, precision, and surgical execution from the pocket, Roethlisberger thrived in chaos. He extended plays with his legs, not with blazing speed, but with uncanny strength and awareness. He’d keep his eyes downfield, shed a defender, and find a receiver who’d broken off his route - often for a big gain or even six points.
That improvisational ability helped Roethlisberger lead the Steelers to two Super Bowl titles and cement his legacy as one of the toughest and most clutch quarterbacks of his generation. He may not have had the same number of rings as Brady, but he earned every ounce of respect from his peers - including the GOAT himself.
So when Brady calls Big Ben a “magician,” it’s not just a compliment. It’s an acknowledgment from one legend to another - a nod to the kind of quarterback who didn’t just play the game, but bent it to his will when the play broke down. And for nearly two decades, that made Ben Roethlisberger one of the most dangerous men under center.