As if we needed yet another reminder of the specialness of Tom Brady, here’s a Pittsburgh Steelers fun fact that will help: Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is 2-6 when playing in his first game back after an injury.

Big Ben returned to the lineup Sunday for the Steelers’ showdown against the Ravens in Baltimore just two weeks after undergoing surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee. He had suffered the injury during the Steelers’ 30-15 loss to the Miami Dolphins on Oct. 16 and was expected to be out 4-6 weeks, but he missed only one game – Oct. 23 against the Patriots – plus Pittsburgh’s bye week that followed.

OK, so props to tough guy Ben for getting back to the rock pile so quickly. But he looked brutal for most of the game against Baltimore, completing just nine of his first 29 passes until connecting with Antonio Brown for a 23-yard touchdown with 8:38 remaining. As CBS analyst and former Steelers coach Bill Cowher said during halftime, “I just feel there’s a comfort level he has to work through. … It’s almost about him getting comfortable with the speed of the game, the things going on around him.”

Roethlisberger was sacked for losses of 11 and 12 yards on the next drive, which ended with him throwing the ball out of the end zone on fourth-and-18. He did carry the ball 4 yards into the end zone on the Steelers’ last drive – his first rushing touchdown in three years – but that’s the way it ended. He had found his comfort level, but too late in the day to win the game.

Rarely has Brady ever had to find his comfort level. All he’s had to find is a parking space. He’s only been out of action for two blocks of time in his career – one of them following his Week 1 knee injury in 2008 that doomed his season, the other this year’s four-game Deflategate suspension. Considering he had an entire preseason to get ready for 2009, it’s not as though he had to look all that hard for his comfort level.

(If you’re wondering how Roethlisberger and Brady match up in the all-important First Game Back After Being Suspended standings, both quarterbacks are undefeated. Roethlisberger was suspended for four games in 2010 for violating the NFL personal-conduct policy. When he returned, he threw three touchdown passes in the Steelers’ 28-10 victory against Cleveland. Brady celebrated his release from Warden Goodell’s Shawshank State Prison with a similar performance: three TD passes in a 33-13 victory against the Browns.)

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We’re all aware that Brady has been a durable quarterback through the years. But Sunday, with Pats fans looking for alternate bye-week NFL programming, Roethlisberger’s struggles hammered home the point that we’ve never really seen a gimpy, on-the-mend Brady. Not yet, anyway.

In fact, all it took was a couple of hours of viewing NFL RedZone to realize just how perilous the league’s quarterback situation is. While rookie quarterback Dak Prescott looked good for the Dallas Cowboys, throwing three touchdowns in a 35-10 victory against the Browns, Cleveland’s Cody Kessler took a lot of hard hits in the second half after a fairly good first half. It was the opposite with Eagles rookie Carson Wentz, who looked awful in the first half, not bad in the second half. The Chiefs’ Nick Foles completed just 2-of-10 passes until throwing a touchdown pass to Albert Wilson. The Chiefs emerged with a 19-14 victory against the Jacksonville Jags as quarterback, Blake Bortles, threw an interception to a K.C. defender who was standing around in his own personal area code.

The quarterback news, however, wasn’t all bad. The Giants’ Eli Manning threw four TD passes. And the Ravens’ Joe Flacco connected with Mike Wallace on a 95-yard touchdown completion, the longest in franchise history. (There was a brief scare when it looked like Flacco had suffered a horrific, Joe Theismann-like injury, but it turns out that thing that suddenly protruded from his left knee was part of the brace he was wearing, not a broken bone.)

All in all, though, it wasn’t a pretty day of quarterbacking.

I wonder if Jimmy Garoppolo had the TV turned on.


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