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Ben Roethlisberger and his father, Ken, were driving the quarterback's dogs to the vet the other day in Pittsburgh (supply your own Michael Vick joke here), and the subject turned to the tumult of 2006. They began listing everything the young passer had experienced over the past year -- the life-threatening motorcycle crash, the appendix that nearly burst, the rocky season, the departure of a coaching legend -- and it all felt so overwhelming.
"When you really think back on everything you went through," Ken told his son, "it was a lot of stuff."
That realization triggered a few seconds of contemplative silence from Big Ben, who was driving his new black pickup truck and, for you non-Libertarians who fret about such things, was indeed taking the necessary safety precautions.
"I was wearing my seat belt," he assured me last Sunday during a phone interview. "I even had a helmet and shoulder pads on."
Yes, he was joking about that last part, and that in and of itself is a good thing. As the NFL's youngest quarterback to have captured a Super Bowl tries to re-establish himself as one of the league's brightest young stars, add levity to the long list of attributes that can help him pull it off.



SI.com - Writers - Michael Silver: Wiser Roethlisberger looks to return to form in 2007 - Thursday May 31, 2007 5:04PM