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Lombardi Says Roethlisberger Hates Playing Under Center, Which Eliminates Play-Action Passing

Assuming Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is back for an 18th season, he’ll have a new offensive coordinator in 2021 in Matt Canada, who was the team’s quarterbacks coach in 2020. With that change, it will certainly be interesting to see if Roethlisberger starts to utilize more play-action than he has in previous years, in addition to taking more snaps under center like he did in his younger years.

According to Michael Lombardi of The Athletic, last season Roethlisberger was in the shogun on 573 of his 608 total pass attempts. Additionally, the Steelers offense also ran a lot of empty sets in 2020 that included four wide receivers on the field and Roethlisberger only attempted 34 passes with two receivers on the field last season, according to Lombardi.