{"id":264876,"date":"2025-08-05T23:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T23:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/264876\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T23:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T23:18:10","slug":"ben-roethlisberger-steelers-o-line-coaching-staff-were-underprepared-for-2021-playoff-loss-against-chiefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/264876\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Roethlisberger: Steelers’ O-Line, Coaching Staff Were ‘Underprepared’ For 2021 Playoff Loss Against Chiefs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Roethlisberger put together a Hall of Fame career with the Pittsburgh Steelers. For 18 seasons, he was their starting quarterback, helping them win two Super Bowls. Unfortunately, Roethlisberger\u2019s career didn\u2019t get a fairytale ending. In his final season, 2021, the Steelers made the playoffs but got crushed by the Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> in the first round. Recently, Roethlisberger shared his thoughts on why the Steelers lost that game.<\/p>\n

\u201cOffensively, we just couldn\u2019t do much, for whatever reason,\u201d Roethlisberger said Tuesday on his Footbahlin\u2019 with Ben Roethlisberger podcast.<\/a> \u201cI don\u2019t know if we were overwhelmed going into it or what the deal was\u2026 I just remember that we struggled early to get going, and they just stayed on the field. They kept converting third downs and we couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s what our offense was. We didn\u2019t have the ability that last year\u2026 We had a line that was maybe a little underprepared, coaching staff that was probably a little underprepared to have us ready for stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Steelers lost that game 42-21, with their offense being sluggish for most of the game. The Steelers actually scored first that game, but it came courtesy of a T.J. Watt fumble recovery that he ran back for a touchdown. Unfortunately, the Chiefs\u2019 offense started to get going after that.<\/p>\n

Kansas City proceeded to score 35 unanswered points. Roethlisberger is correct that the Steelers\u2019 offense couldn\u2019t seem to do anything right. They didn\u2019t move the ball substantially until the third quarter, and at that point, the Chiefs were taking their foot off the gas. They essentally already had the game under wraps.<\/p>\n

Roethlisberger places some of the blame for that loss on the Steelers\u2019 offensive line and coaching staff. That shouldn\u2019t surprise Steelers fans, though. Those were two of their biggest areas of concern that season.<\/p>\n

In that game, the Steelers\u2019 starting offensive line consisted of rookie Dan Moore Jr., J.C. Hassenauer, Chukwuma Okorafor, Trai Turner, and John Leglue. That\u2019s not exactly an all-star group. In fact, it may be one of the Steelers\u2019 worst starting offensive line combinations in recent history.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the team\u2019s coaching staff featured some names that seemed to hurt the team more than they helped,<\/a> specifically on the offensive side. That was Matt Canada\u2019s first year as the Steelers\u2019 offensive coordinator. There weren\u2019t a lot of positive moments during his stint in that role.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t the only name that limited Pittsburgh, though. That year, offensive line coach Adrian Klemm left them before the season ended<\/a> to take up the same position at the University of Oregon. That left assistant offensive line coach Chris Morgan to take over the role with the Steelers, and he also left once the 2021 season ended.<\/p>\n

Therefore, it\u2019s easy to see why Roethlisberger highlights those two groups as reasons for the loss. Obviously, it wasn\u2019t all on them, but they played critical roles. It was an unfortunate way for Roethlisberger\u2019s career to end, although at least he got one last shot in the postseason.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Roethlisberger put together a Hall of Fame career with the Pittsburgh Steelers. For 18 seasons, he was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2063],"tags":[6594,346,6595,7,118,110,2438,2437,6,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-264876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-chiefs","8":"tag-ben-roethlisberger","9":"tag-chiefs","10":"tag-footbahlin-with-ben-roethlisberger","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-kansas-city","13":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","14":"tag-kansascity","15":"tag-kansascitychiefs","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114978718092407335","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}