PITTSBURGH -- A wild week when it comes to generating news, even by NFL standards, cannot overshadow this reality: If you don’t have a quarterback in this league you don’t have a chance. Ndamukong Suh moving to South Beach and Chip Kelly overhauling his roster don't change that.
That is why team president Art Rooney II smiled broadly late Friday afternoon when he announced the new contract the Pittsburgh Steelers consummated with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
“There was nothing more important than getting this done, so we’re very happy with how our first week of free agency ended,” Rooney said.
The deal, which came after the Steelers had been one of the quietest teams through the first wave of free agency, had always been a matter of when, not if.
That did not stop the fanfare that accompanied Roethlisberger’s new deal, as Dan Rooney, Mike Tomlin and Kevin Colbert squeezed into a corner of the Steelers’ media room along with Roethlisberger's wife and two young children. Nor should it have.
Roethlisberger is playing the best football of his career, and if the Steelers needed any last reminder of why they signed him to a new five-year contract they got it when they passed the library on the way to the media room.
The library is where the Steelers display six gleaming Lombardi trophies, and Roethlisberger told Rooney II that he might have to look into expanding the room.
“That’s got to be our ultimate goal and I trust that coach [Mike Tomlin] and the Steelers will put the best football team on the field,” Roethlisberger said.
His signing a new deal is an endorsement of the direction the Steelers are headed after going 11-5 last season and winning the AFC North for the first time since 2010.
The Steelers also have the much easier job -- at least for the foreseeable future -- of building around a franchise quarterback rather than building a team first, then trying to find the right quarterback to lead it.
Consider the quarterbacks who have won Super Bowls since 2005, when Roethlisberger led the Steelers to a title in his second season: Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Flacco, Russell Wilson and Tom Brady.
“There’s no other way to do it these days in the league,” Rooney II said.
Amen to that. But there is an element of luck in getting one of those players.
As sophisticated as scouting has become, projecting a college quarterback at the next level is still largely throwing a dart at a board while blindfolded and facing a howling wind.
When you have one, you ride him as long as you can, something the Steelers know from their own history.
From the time Terry Bradshaw retired in 1984 until the Steelers drafted Roethlisberger with the 11th overall pick in 2004, Pittsburgh won nine playoff games.
The Steelers have won 10 with Roethlisberger as their starting quarterback, as well as the team's only two post-Bradshaw era Super Bowls.
The Steelers haven’t won a playoff game since the 2010 season, which is why Roethlisberger emitted an unmistakable sense of urgency even as he radiated happiness over the deal, which could allow him to play his entire career with one team.
“I think this day is just another step of me doing everything I can to try and be the best leader, teammate, quarterback, everything I can be,” said Roethlisberger, who was clad in a charcoal-colored suit. “I think we’ve got a good, young football team that’s got a lot of talent, a lot of ability. I think the sky’s the limit for this team.”