Ben Roethlisberger: Why the Pittsburgh Steelers QB Is One of the Top Clutch QBs

Much has been made lately of the NFL Network's ranking of top players, which placed Ben Roethlisberger 41st among his NFL peers.

Looking at it one way, Roethlisberger is ranked 41st out of hundreds of players. That's quite the achievement. Looking at it the other way, however, Roethlisberger was ranked at No. 41, way below several other quarterbacks that don't have some of the talents that Big Ben possesses.

It's hard to argue against players like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning being ahead of Roethlisberger on this list. Brady has three Super Bowl wins under his belt and has been part of some of the top-performing offenses in league history.

Manning is the ultimate statistical quarterback, holding some amazing season records and on track to eclipse some of the marks set by Brett Favre and Dan Marino.

Those performances are hard to top. But Roethlisberger has both players and every other quarterback in the NFL in at least one category: clutch performances.

What made the Super Bowl loss to Green Bay so surprising was that, with the game on the line and a limited amount of time remaining for him to operate, Ben Roethlisberger did not come up big for the first time in his career.

Everyone expected him to lead the Steelers to victory. Green Bay had left him too much time. He would make them pay and claim his third trophy.

Except he didn't.

That's probably the only time in a seven-season career that Big Ben has not struck when the game was on the line.

You don't have to look very far in his resume to see the successes. Super Bowl XLIII and the drive to victory with only minutes to go still ranks as one of his top moments as a player.

He holds the NFL's fourth-best all-time winning percentage in the regular season (.704). Part of that has been enhanced by comeback victories. Roethlisberger has 19 comeback wins and 25 game-winning drives in the fourth quarter and overtime.

That's good for the best ever through a player's first seven seasons—better than Brady or Manning, Brees or Rivers. Better than anyone, ever.

He's the very definition of clutch. When he takes the field late in a game, he takes his already stellar game to another level. He rarely makes mistakes or poor plays during those late drives and almost always finds a way to win.

Clutch ability is an underrated statistic in the NFL today. There are plenty of statistically excellent quarterbacks who can't put away a team or bring their team back. Philip Rivers comes to mind here as a player who puts up great numbers but, along with his team, melts when the game is on the line.

The ultimate statistic in the NFL is the number of victories a quarterback leads his team to. In that regard, guys like Roethlisberger are much more valuable than 4,000-yard passers or 50-touchdown throwers. Why? It's because clutch players win more games and have the capacity to rise to the occasion.

When it comes to clutch, nobody is better than Big Ben. His Super Bowl failure is more anomaly than trend. Look for him to learn from it and make a strong push to be even better.

Next year, it will be extremely hard for anyone to say he's merely the 41st best player in the league. He should be in the top 20.