Ben Roethlisberger’s MVP case is built on useless stats and antiquated arguments

The Steelers are 9-0 and Ben Roethlisberger is their quarterback. That about sums up his argument for MVP.

Because the NFL MVP award has pretty much become the “QB of the league’s best team” award, Ben Roethlisberger forcing his way into the MVP discussion was inevitable.

Apparently, this is the week it’s happening.

The Steelers are 9-0 and Roethlisberger’s traditional stats seem to be all in order. He’s completing 66.8% of his passes and has thrown for 22 touchdowns against only four interceptions. Sure, his 6.8 yards-per-attempt would be a career-low for a full season, but did I mention Pittsburgh hasn’t lost a game yet?

Really, Roethlisberger’s candidacy is wholly dependent on Pittsburgh’s record and that TD-INT ratio. The more useful stats we have show the Steelers passing game has been middling at best. The offense ranks 15th in DVOA and the passing game is 16th, per Football Outsiders.

Roethlisberger does rank 5th in EPA per dropback, but a lot of his production in the passing game is coming after the catch. Sports Info Solutions has a proprietary metric that isolates a player’s individual contribution from the Expected Points model — so he wouldn’t get extra credit for Chase Claypool breaking a tackle and scoring a touchdown, for instance — and Roethlisberger ranks 14th in that metric. Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson all rank in the top-five.

Other advanced metrics pretty much bury Roethlisberger’s MVP candidacy. He ranks 23rd in Success Rate. He ranks 27th in Next Gen Stats’ Completion Percentage Over Expected metric. He ranks 20th in ESPN’s QBR. He’s graded out as PFF’s 19th best quarterback this season.

Whether you’re looking at numbers at a team-level or an individual-level, Roethlisberger just doesn’t pass the smell test.

His tape isn’t helping him either. This season, Roethlisberger has mostly played the distributor role, which isn’t an archetype we usually include in MVP discussions. The more conservative approach is probably design given his issues with the deep ball this year. Steelers fans have tried to push back against this narrative that Ben is struggling in that department — as if they haven’t been watching him miss on deep balls all season — and have used misleading numbers to argue it’s not really an issue.

Take this stat from The Athletic’s Mark Kaboly…

Whoa! That would seem to suggest that Roethlisberger is throwing the deep ball as well as the other MVP candidates. That’s how Steelers fans interpreted it, at least.

But even a cursory interrogation of those numbers shows that Roethlisberger isn’t throwing the deep ball nearly as well as Mahomes and Wilson or most NFL quarterbacks. Kaboly got those numbers from PFF. The company also offers an “Adjusted Completion Percentage,” which doesn’t punish the quarterback for dropped passes and throwaways. Here’s how those three passers stack up on deep passes (20+ air yards), per PFF:

Mahomes: 48.8%
Wilson: 43.2%
Roethlisberger: 31.8%

Not even close! Roethlisberger actually ranks 30th in the stat. The deep ball has been a problem and anyone who has watched him play should know this.

It’s not surprising that the “Ben for MVP” talk is picking up in the greater Pittsburgh area, but it’s gaining steam nationally, too. The AP ran a story on Ben’s growing case for the award and Fox Sports’ Shannon Sharpe had the 38-year-old on his list of candidates.

Sharpe doesn’t have anything to add to the discussion outside of the Steelers’ record and Ben’s TD-INT ratio, but in arguing that Roethlisberger should be a top MVP candidate, he actually comes up with a compelling argument for the other side:

“Big Ben is 22 [touchdowns] and four [interceptions] and he threw three interceptions in one game against Tennessee — but they ended up winning that game.”

Stop it right there.

Yeah, “his team ended up winning a game in which he turned the ball over three times” isn’t really a good argument when we’re talking about the value that player is providing. Roethlisberger played poorly and Pittsburgh still managed to win a game against a playoff team on the road. How valuable could he be?

That, of course, is a pretty weak argument on its own. But you could say the same for any argument based on the Steelers’ win-loss record or Roethlisberger’s TD-INT ratio.

Roethlisberger has a lot of ground to make up in the MVP race. Endorsements from the media will help — after all, it’s the media that decides who wins — but Vegas doesn’t seem to be taking the bait just yet, with Roethlisberger’s MVP odds currently sitting at 14-1, putting him behind Mahomes, Rodgers, Wilson and even Kyler Murray.

So if you disagreed with the entire premise of this article, you might want to lay down a bet on him before those odds come down. My advice: Save your money.