But he won

https://www.gq.com/story/ben-roethlisberger-nfl-pittsburgh-steelers

What We Talk About When We Talk About Big Ben

In defense of Ben Roethlisberger? No, not exactly. There is no excusing his past behavior off the field. But on it, he is the football player who epitomizes the grit and brutality we love about the game. And maybe it's time to admit we can't have one without the other

By Michael Weinreb
December 6, 2010

"Two years ago in the snow in Pittsburgh, he threw two touchdowns in the fourth period to win by a single point. That night he checked into the hospital with a fractured jaw. There wasn’t a pass he couldn’t throw, a team he couldn’t beat, a pain he couldn’t endure, or a woman he couldn’t fuck, given the right time and combination of pieces."—Peter Gent, North Dallas Forty

Near the beginning of the most brutal game of the most overtly violent season in the history of the National Football League, Ben Roethlisberger broke his nose. You could see it happen, because after being sacked by an angry swarm of Baltimore Raven defenders, Roethlisberger tore off his helmet and a rivulet of blood cascaded from his crooked proboscis. Weaving toward the sideline, a towel pressed to his nostrils, Roethlisberger looked a little like DeNiro playing Jake LaMotta, punch drunk and vacant, limping along on a badly injured foot that appeared to have been mummified by the trainers before the game.

Roethlisberger came back into the game, of course, because this is what Ben Roethlisberger does. If Tom Brady is the epitome of quarterbacking grace, and Peyton Manning is the prototype of quarterbacking subtetly and misdirection, Roethlisberger is the quarterback who epitomizes the brutality of his chosen profession. For the rest of the night, as he watched his tight end felled by an egregriously uncalled helmet-to-helmet cheap shot, as he led the Steelers to a 13–10 victory last Sunday night in this intermittently frightening war of attrition, Roethsliberger played with splotches of his own blood on his jersey. He eluded charging defenders often by absorbing their contact rather than avoiding it; he spun into traffic and slipped out of arm tackles and fell down repeatedly.

At one point in the fourth quarter, with his team driving, Roethlisberger did something no quarterback should ever be able to do: He carried one of the league’s best defenders, Terrell Suggs, for a yard or two, staggering to his left and out of the pocket, and then freeing his arm long enough to throw the ball away and avoid both a sack and an intentional grounding penalty. On NBC, Cris Collinsworth called it one of the greatest plays he’d seen in quite some time, and it was hard to disagree; at the very least, it was the most exciting throw-away of the season.