He helped whip student into shape
It took Mark Whipple some time to teach Ben Roethlisberger how to get ready in a hurry at halftime of an NFL game. This week one of his jobs will be to take the Steelers' remarkable second-year quarterback back to the way it used to be.
''My first game coaching in the NFL was at Ford Field," the former University of Massachusetts coach, who has tutored Roethlisberger as Pittsburgh's quarterbacks coach the past two years, recalled last week. ''It was Ben's first NFL game, too. At halftime I'm trying to find him so we can make a couple of adjustments. It's not like college, where you've got two bands and 20-25 minutes to kill at halftime. It's a couple of adjustments and let's go, but Ben didn't realize that.
''I finally see him resting in the back of the room and I come running up, telling him, 'We gotta go.' He's like, 'What?' Now for this game, with the halftime show taking so long, he's got to go back to sleeping at halftime."
Both of them will be making their first appearance in the Super Bowl Sunday night when they enter Ford Field together with the intention of beating the Seattle Seahawks and helping Pittsburgh become the first sixth seed to win the big game.
They will work toward that goal the way they have worked almost every day since they first met as rookies in the spring of 2004, one a No. 1 draft choice, the other a first-year NFL coach coming off a successful collegiate career that included taking UMass to the Division 1-AA national championship in 1998. They will work together, each doing all he can to make the other look good.
For Whipple, his arrival at Super Bowl XL in only his second season in the NFL has coincided perfectly with his student's rapid rise. In their two years together, Roethlisberger is 26-4 as a starter, yet he's not the same QB this year he was during his rookie season, when the Steelers went 15-1 after he took over from the injured Tommy Maddox early in the season. By the end of that year Whipple's student was running on fumes, fading fast as the playoffs approached. After throw for 17 touchdowns and only 11 interceptions in the regular season, he threw five interceptions in two playoff games, three in a loss to the Patriots in the AFC Championship game. It was an uncharacteristic performance, but perhaps an inevitable one for a rookie still unaware of what life in the NFL's fast lane was really like.
When he got his team back to the AFC title game this year, however, the QB Whipple sent out to take on the Broncos was a far more advanced one. He was running not on fumes, but on fire.
''Without question, he's a better quarterback now, just because of his experience," Whipple said. ''I don't know if we could have had the game plan we had in Denver a year ago. A couple of passes he hit in Denver he never would have been comfortable with even earlier this year. At one point he made a read off where [Denver safety John] Lynch lined up. A year ago he only made his reads off of where our receivers were going. He's really developed so much in two years."
Whipple believes one of the key moments in that development came this season against the Patriots when, after driving the ball to the New England 6 with 6:11 to play in the third quarter and the Steelers leading, 10-7, Pittsburgh coach Bill Cowher declined to go for it on fourth and 1, settling for a 24-yard field goal. When Roethlisberger came to the sideline he was livid, and he let Whipple know it.
''That game really helped us," Whipple said, even though the Patriots won, 23-20. ''On third and 7 we ran it for 6 yards on an inside draw. It's fourth and 1 on their 6 and we didn't go for it, and when Ben came to the sideline he was hollering, 'Put the freaking ball in my hands!' What kind of bleeping call was that?' I told him, 'Go ask him. I don't make the calls,' and he went right up to Bill and did the same thing. He was taking responsibility. Bill told him later, 'You're right.' After that we got more aggressive with him.
''[In the AFC Championship game, the Broncos] had third and 10 down, 10-0, inside the red zone and they ran an inside zone play and then took the field goal. No way we do that with No. 7."
That's the way Whipple likes it, too. He liked to have the ball when he was quarterbacking Brown to a 13-5 record in two years as a starter in the 1970s, and it's the way he liked to play it as a coach at New Haven, Brown, and UMass. He liked it wide-open. He liked to see the ball in the air and the chains moving.
The NFL is a bit more conservative, but the Steelers have marched through the playoffs, beating third-seeded Cincinnati, top seed Indianapolis, and second seed Denver, by throwing first to get a lead and then turning to the power running game to control the clock.
At least some of the credit for Roethlisberger's rapid development has to go to the man who spends every day with him from July to January. This year is a special one, however, because they'll get to spend the first five days in February together as well. But Whipple will refuse to let Roethlisberger see the Super Bowl as anything other than what it really is -- another day in an unusual office.
''I feel it's important in our meetings and at practice not to change what I've done because it's the Super Bowl," Whipple said. ''Sticking to the same routine when you're away like this will be the hardest thing. Practices will be a little different just because we're not in Pittsburgh, but I've always coached the same way no matter who my team was playing. I try and let the players have fun. I can't change for the Super Bowl. I didn't for [UMass's] national championship in Chattanooga.
''We've beaten good teams the last three weeks. We've traveled well on the road. Now all of a sudden people say, 'This is the Super Bowl. What are you going to do different?' Why do anything different?"
Not only was Roethlisberger hurting physically by the time the playoffs rolled around last season, he also was struggling with a season that was nearly twice as long as those in college. As a result, he did not play well in a win over the Jets and he struggled mightily in losing to the Patriots in the AFC title game. A year later, Whipple may be the same as the Super Bowl approaches, but he's happy to report Roethlisberger is a different guy.
''You could see signs he was wearing down before we played the Patriots," Whipple said. ''It's different this year."
Roethlisberger's a big reason Whipple and the Steelers are in Super Bowl XL, but not simply because of his arm and his ability to lead. They're here because when Roethlisberger needed to make a diving, one-handed tackle on Colts defensive back Nick Harper he found a way to make it, saving what would have been the winning score after Harper recovered a Jerome Bettis fumble on an end-of-the game handoff and nearly returned it all the way.
''[Assistant head coach and line coach Russ] Grimm always says he never makes a block on the reverse, but if we needed a block for someone to score the winning touchdown, he'd make it," Whipple said of Roethlisberger.
Whipple believes he's still growing as a coach. After 16 years at the collegiate level, working for someone else wasn't easy, but Whipple threw himself into teaching and learning. Learning from Cowher and Grimm and longtime running backs coach Dick Hoak. Learning even from the kid QB he's helping to develop. Learning that as big as Sunday's Super Bowl may be to the rest of the world, to Whipple it's just another game he's happy to be a part of.
''I haven't stopped learning," Whipple said. ''I'd like to think I'm making a contribution here, but I'm also growing as a person and as a coach. Right now we're so busy preparing for the Seahawks you really don't have time to reflect on the magnitude of the game. It has to be just another game now. But I'm sure when I get a chance to look back, I'll see it was a little bigger than the URI game."
Just a little, but it's still the same. It's still Mark Whipple coaching a quarterback to do what he's always wanted to see them do. Put up the ball and put up some points.
