At This Point In Career, Who’s Better, Bradshaw or Big Ben?

Terry Bradshaw put together a Hall of Fame career during his 14 year playing career in Pittsburgh. A career that saw him bring four Super Bowl titles to the city and land him as one of the biggest legends in Pittsburgh sports history.  Ben Roethlisberger has played exactly half that amount of time with 7 years and two titles so far.  So, since he’s played exactly half of what Bradshaw did, we felt like what a great time to compare the two at this point in their careers to see who’s better.

The very first thing we looked at was numbe of starts made at this point.  After 7 years Bradshaw had 73 starts, Big Ben has 98 starts. The advantage goes to Roethlisberger by a large margin. Big Ben takes a 1-0 lead.

The second thing we looked at was winning percentage. We obviously couldnt’ measure wins because Big Ben has 25 additional starts, so win percentage makes far more sense.  At the seven year point T.B.’s winning percentage was .647 while Big Ben’s is .704.  Again, advantage Big Ben, he takes a 2-0 lead.

The third item we looked at was yards, now we understand that Ben has made more starts, and we took that out of the equation for winning percentage, but for yards, sorry, that will not be removed, making more starts is impressive and Ben will not be punished as that’s a good stat. So, after  7 years, Bradshaw had thrown for 14,964 yards while Big Ben has thrown for 22,502.  Another large advantage for Big Ben, 3-0 lead.

So let’s move on to TD passes, through the first seven years of his career the great Bradshaw had thrown for 76 TD passes. Big Ben has thrown for 144 TD passes in his career so far.  That’s a 4-0 Big Ben lead.

With TD passes, the interceptions always seem to be in the ratio, so that’s the next thing we’re going to measure. For those of you rooting for Bradshaw, this category should be assumed his as we again will not take into account number of starts, so naturally with far less starts the expectation is Bradshaw should have less interceptions.  The results, after 7 seasons, Bradshaw had thrown 99 interceptions, Big Ben has thrown only 86.  Wow, now that’s a very telling stat considering Ben has started 25 more games to this point and has thrown 13 less interceptions!  We are NOT knocking Bradsahw, and we sould point out that 44 of those 99 picks were in his first two seasons, but they still count the same and Ben now has a commanding 5-0 lead.

The big knock on Big Ben has always been his knack for getting sacked. The O line often lands the blame unfairly and even Roethlisberger will tell you the sacks are a result of him trying to make a play. That said, those sacks do hurt the team so we needed to see Bradshaw’s sacks at this point vs. Ben’s. After seven seasons Bradshaw had been sacked 157 times whil Big Ben has been sacked a whopping 274 times so far. That will put Bradshaw on the board and Ben’s lead is cut to 5-1.

Often times a QB is recognized on his ability to lead his team back from a fourth quarter defecit and on a game winning drive. John Elway was certainly known for it and we decided that this should also be a category as it’s a true measure of how clutch a QB is. Through seven seasons Bradshaw had 12 while Big Ben has 25.  Ben is up 6-1.

The next two categories come from the post season, first is postseason wins. After 7 years Bradshaw had 8 and Big Ben has 10. Ben now leads 7-1.

Next we measured Super Bowl titles since everyone loves to measure a QB on that. Ben has appeared in 1 more Super Bowl but they each have 2 wins at this point. We’ll call that a tie. 7-1-1 Big Ben.

Last but not least, awards won and Pro Bow appearances to date. Bradshaw had won 2 Super Bowl MVP awards and appeared in one Pro Bowl after seven seasons. Big Ben has won the offensive Rookie of the Year award and appeared in 1 Pro Bowl to this point.  We’ll give the point to Bradshaw. So, after 10 categories it appears Ben won 7-2-1 as the better QB after seven years.

While at this point in their careers it appears that Big Ben is the better QB, he still has a long way to go. In the next several years he can really surpass Bradshaw as the all time Pittsburgh QB or he can slow down and Bradshaw can keep his title. Either way, both are great in their own way, one (Bradshaw) is already a Hall of Famer and the other (Big Ben) appears on his way.  The one stat we really like is Bradshaw only one 2 of his 4 titles in seven years so we’re hoping Big Ben can get his second two like Bradshaw did in his next years to come!

Here is a look at some Big Ben highlights:

Here are some Bradshaw highlights: