Big Ben Climbing Fast

Ben Roethlisberger of 2-0 Pittsburgh could displace Tom Brady of 1-1 New England as the NFL’s most valuable quarterback today when their teams play at Pittsburgh. During the Steelers’ fast start this season in two routs, their tall second-year passer, who is nearly as accurate as Brady, has shown more improvement.

Brady’s team let him down last weekend, rather than vice versa, but Roethlisberger has been more of an NFL wheel, on the league’s most impressive team. At a listed 6 feet 5 -- he’s more like 6-7 -- he is Joe Montana on stilts. Lacking a big arm, as Montana did, he has much of the same mobility and accuracy.

The troubling Steeler statistic is that Roethlisberger passed only 11 times in Week 1, when the Steelers ran 41 times.

He completed nine of the 11 that day and threw two for touchdowns, as he did again in Week 2, when he completed 14 for 21.

With 32 running plays in Week 2, a 27-7 victory over Houston, their offense was more balanced. And balance is what they need most.

The Steelers can beat the likes of Tennessee and Houston with the run-run offense they prefer -- but with a running team, they couldn’t win their way through the playoffs last winter. And in a passing era, it’s doubtful whether they ever can.

If they’d let Roethlisberger throw more on first down, he would hit more big plays, and the Steeler running game would be less predictable and more dominant.

Patriot Problem

As New England stumbled in the Carolina game last week, losing, 27-17 -- after having won two of the last three Super Bowls -- it was clear that the Patriots’ problem is also an unbalanced offensive concept.

A year ago, with these same players, the Patriots won by varying their offense for different opponents, mixing quick, short passes with long passes and sometimes, as against Indianapolis and Peyton Manning, with running plays, to keep him off the field.

This year, the Patriots have been riding the same offense, and that’s what brought on the Week 2 loss.

In Week 1, they had turned back Oakland, 30-20, with an offense largely based on Brady’s shotgun-formation passes thrown from a so-called empty backfield. The Patriot lineup included three or four wide receivers but no running back or blocking back.

That, however, is an unsound formation. When an opponent can anticipate a series of shotgun plays, it can be ready for them, as Carolina was in Week 2. The quarterback is easily blitzed and the running threat nullified.

So Brady appeared to be having a bad game when, instead, he was the victim of a bad concept.

The difference between the ’04 and ’05 Patriots is that their ’04 offensive coordinator, Charlie Weis, is now at Notre Dame.

What they miss is Weis’ planning. Coach Bill Belichick’s decision not to bring in a veteran offensive coordinator has been, so far, a mistake.

A jumped-up quarterback coach, Josh McDainels, seems to be doing most of the coordinating at New England. He must be a capable teacher or Belichick wouldn’t have retained him since ‘01, but he is without experience for a position of that importance. And it was for leadership inexperience that Brady paid so heavily.

Shotgun Errors

The shotgun is, in any case, the wrong offense for Brady. It’s true that standing back to take the snap puts a shotgun quarterback farther from blitzers, but Brady solves most blitzing problems with his normal game in any formation.

He has a quick drop and is hard to blitz in any formation because he reads and releases so quickly.

The problem with the shotgun is that the quarterback loses the threat of his running game. He can’t hand off or pitch out on quick-hitting plays. Nor can he slip a draw to his back, losing the threat of play-action passes. All he has left are deep-pocket passes and the defense knows it.

The Panthers got to Brady because they’re pretty good and because any quarterback is vulnerable to a heavy rush if the defense knows it can expect to see him standing in one place. Equally damaging to a shotgun passer, much of his mobility is nullified.

The shotgun is almost always wrong for most good, quick passers, including Peyton Manning, who, nevertheless, loves it, reasoning, like all of them, that it gives him a better look at the defense and his potential receivers. What most passers seem to forget, or ignore, is that the shotgun also gives the defense a better look at them.

The Run-Pass Threat

The Philadelphia Eagles were demonstrating the principal advantage of sound football when they routed the San Francisco 49ers, 42-3, last week. The requirement for success in pro ball is a simultaneous run-pass threat, and the Eagles have it with Donovan McNabb at quarterback and Brian Westbrook carrying the ball.

Though Westbrook is a 205-pound wide receiver playing out of position, he and several other Eagle backs ran 30 times, and McNabb passed 33 times. The rushers gained 140 yards and scored once. McNabb threw five touchdown passes -- and, as usual, lined up infrequently in the shotgun.

The steady factor in the success of McNabb’s air game is the prospect of an Eagle run. Pro football’s other great passing teams all have even better running threats -- the Patriots with Corey Dillon and the Colts with Edgerrin James -- yet every time they line up in the shotgun, those threats are gone.

Job for Officials

McNabb was lucky that he faced a rebuilding team such as the 49ers after having been roughed up by the Atlanta Falcons in Week 1, taking a late hit that produced a severely bruised chest reminiscent of the injury that ruined last year for Tennessee quarterback Steve McNair.

The Week 1 hit, which earned Falcon defensive lineman Chad Lavalais the league’s heaviest injury fine of the month, $7,500, was so harmful that although McNabb played later on he wasn’t the same.

This led to a Falcon triumph that might not have happened if the Eagle quarterback had been his old self.

Hits that incapacitate quarterbacks in big games can’t be prevented by $7,500 fines. It’s worth much more than $7,500 to a starter for a title contender to see a McNair or a McNabb writhing on the ground.

But dirty football is difficult to punish. A suspension is the wrong fix, hurting the team more than the offending player. Fines in the $25,000 neighborhood would be more fair but such suggestions always bring protests from the players’ association.

Maybe the union boss, Gene Upshaw, an old Hall of Fame player, could take a stand for clean football by recommending serious fines for late hits.

The NFL should also be insisting on stricter regulation of the rules against what defensive players call little late hits. There’s no such thing as a demonstrably harmless little late hit on a quarterback. Any late push or shove could result in serious injury when numbers of big men are flailing around.

To defensive players and even to some officials, it’s wrong to punish an athlete for what seems a gentle hit after a play is over. This attitude has lately brought a series of seemingly harmless late pokes and pushes to passers -- and it was in such an environment that an aggressive Falcon took one more step and plowed into McNabb’s chest after the bell. NFL front-office action could prevent that kind of play.