The Quarterback Whisperer

by Bruce Arians

  After I was shown the door at York Catholic High, every college that had been recruiting me to play football suddenly quit calling—except for Virginia Tech. The only reason Tech stayed with me, I told Big Ben, was because the assistant who was recruiting me told the rest of the Hokie staff that I switched schools simply to take a more advanced math class at the public school. What a joke that was—the idea of me taking any type of advanced math class was as preposterous as finding candy on the moon—but that little white lie, which you could get away with in those pre-Internet days, allowed me to go to Tech. That act of kindness by Tech coach John Devlin also solidified my belief in giving people second chances, which is why, years later, I decided to pick Tyrann Mathieu in the third round of the 2013 draft after he had been kicked out of LSU for his well-documented drug problem. I got to know Tyrann before the draft and I knew his heart. He was a good kid who owned up to his mistakes and was committed to being a professional football player. Since he’s been with us, Tyrann has been a big asset to the Cardinals, both on and off the field.

  After a day of golf at Reynolds Plantation, Ben and I crashed into big comfortable chairs on my porch. As the descending sun bled red-gold across the horizon, I told Ben—yes, of course, each of us had a cocktail in our hands—that I wanted him to help me rewrite the playbook. I said, “If you show me you can handle it, I’ll let you call the plays.”

  Ben was thrilled, nearly falling out of his chair. But that proposition was crucial to the future. I needed him to take ownership of the offense, and his response was just what I hoped it would be. I now knew that he was going to take his game, and our team, to the next level.

  Ben spent hours and hours editing the playbook. He got rid of some plays, added a few, and even renamed some. It was important for him to develop terminology that was easy for him to remember and convey to his teammates in the huddle. So we shortened a few things. For instance, a “Post In Comeback” route became PIC.

  When we later gathered for the first practices of the upcoming season, Ben was more serious, more dedicated to his craft. He had been used to getting the game plan when he arrived at the facility on Wednesday before our Sunday game, but now he was going to be by my side on Tuesday in my office helping me to create the plan. Ben couldn’t get enough football. We were now tethered at the hip—the way it should be with a quarterback coach and his starting QB—and we would either succeed or fail together. Ben knew that I was going to fight for him and stick by him, and in return he began working his ass off. He refined his throwing motion. He focused on his footwork. Every day at practice it was like he was preparing to play in the next Super Bowl.

  Because I had given him ownership of the offense, he now felt personally invested in it. He became a great practice player—a far cry from his first two years in the league, when he sometimes would just go through the motions and let his mind wander. And the guys on the team saw this transformation in him as well. Day by day, practice by practice, Ben started to become the leader of the team, leading by his actions.

  “Bruce and I built our communication on the golf course,” Ben says. “I even bought a house down there in Reynolds Plantation to be close to Bruce. He showed that he trusted me, and I busted my tail to reward that trust.”

  In training camp Ben played at the highest level of his career. He went a dozen practices without throwing a single interception. By the time the first regular-season game rolled around, at Cleveland, he was so comfortable with the playbook that I gave him the freedom to change plays at the line of scrimmage. For the first time in his career, he also called the offensive line protections based on how the defense lined up. Against the Browns, Ben threw four touchdown passes in our 34–7 victory.

  That was just a sample of what was to come. For the first time since I’d been with him, it seemed like Ben couldn’t get enough of football. We talked plays, formations, and philosophy over lunch and in my office at all hours. He was always thinking about different ways to attack different defenses. In the process, he also took his leadership to a new level. He started shaking hands with every player during pregame warm-ups and became a vocal presence on the sideline. In short, he was growing up before my eyes.

  In my first season as Pittsburgh’s offensive coordinator, with my quarterback calling some of his own plays, Ben compiled a passer rating of 104.1, still the best of his career. That season, 2007, he played in his first Pro Bowl.

  But it wasn’t until 2008 that I felt we really began to click to the point that we could almost read each other’s minds—even though I continually had to remind him that he wasn’t Superman out there on the field. “Ben, every play is not designed to score a touchdown,” I repeatedly told him. “Sometimes you just have to take what the defense gives you and throw the underneath route.” But Ben could be hardheaded. He got hurt twice that season by holding on to the ball too long and taking big hits.

  Ben is as tough as they come. I’ve seen him play with so many injuries over the years and never complain to his teammates or the media. There were times when he could barely move his legs. Against Baltimore in ’08 he was so immobile that we put him in the pistol formation—he lined up four yards behind center—the entire game; he insisted he didn’t want to be taken out. My advice to him that day was simple—protect yourself by getting the ball out of your hands as quickly as possible. Operating entirely from the pocket, he led us to a 13–9 come-from-behind victory, completing 22 of 40 passes for 246 yards. It was one of the gutsiest performances I’d ever witnessed.

  That afternoon his teammates could see he was hurting, and that earned him even more respect in the locker room. When the leader of your team is also the toughest player on your team, that’s an ideal situation. Fair or not, the other players on both sides of the ball follow the lead of the quarterback. And when Ben grits his teeth and plays through pain, it inspires other players to do the same. It’s almost impossible to overstate the value of that for any NFL team.

  We went 12–4 in the 2008 regular season, winning six games at Heinz Field. After each of those victories, the coaches and the players always knew where the party was going to be held—the back of my car.

  I work hard, but I also play hard. Everyone needs balance in life. And so after a win in our yard that season, I’d shower, change, do any interviews if reporters wanted to talk to me, and then head for my car parked in the players’ and coaches’ lot. I’d pop open the trunk and would have a few coolers chock full of drinks on ice: beers, bourbon, vodka. You name it, I had it. Hey, once a bartender, always a bartender.

  I’m a Crown Royal sipper. Once I got to the car, I’d pour a drink for myself and then start pouring more for the players and coaches who gathered around my ride. These little postgame parties were some of my happiest times in Pittsburgh—I still throw them in our parking lot in Arizona—because for an hour or two we can relax and enjoy each other as friends, not coworkers or teammates, just pals. I loved it. Players and coaches brought their families over. We were just like everyone else who tailgated in parking lots after the games—friends and family enjoying each other’s company.

  Hell, truth be told, even if we didn’t win, we’d still tailgate. I admit, those parties after a loss weren’t as joyful and didn’t last as long, but we still had a good time. I like to believe that I never lost a parking-lot tailgate, the only arena in my life where I’m still undefeated and going strong.

  In Super Bowl XLIII, played in Tampa Bay on February 1, 2009, we faced a team I would soon come to love: the Arizona Cardinals.

  With less than three minutes to play in the fourth quarter, the Cardinals’ Kurt Warner hit Larry Fitzgerald for a 64-yard touchdown pass. We had been in control most of the game—we led 17–7 at halftime and 20–7 in the third quarter—but now we were suddenly down 23–20 with 2:30 left in the game.

  On the sideline everyone looked to Ben. Man, he was a picture of steely, cocksure confidence. “We were built for this,” he said. “We’re built for this one moment. We
got this.” Before he ran out onto the field for our final drive, I huddled with Ben with the world watching. I looked him squarely in the eyes and I could see his immense self-confidence: There was no doubt in my mind that he was going to lead us to victory. I imagined that this was what it was like to look into the eyes of Joe Namath before he took the field in Super Bowl III. You can’t win without your leader—your quarterback—exuding the confidence of a Douglas MacArthur, a Warren Buffett, a Caesar.

  “It’s now or never,” Ben told the guys in the huddle. “Now or never!”

  Starting at our 12-yard line because of a holding penalty, Ben lined up in the shotgun. We were running our two-minute drill offense but we only had one wide receiver and one tight end who were healthy. Nate Washington had a separated shoulder and Hines Ward had a bum knee. So our only legitimate threats on the field were wide receiver Santonio Holmes and tight end Heath Miller. “Throw it to those two guys,” I told Ben before he jogged onto the field.

  Looking at the long field in front of us, I simply hoped to march into field goal range and try to put the game into overtime. But then Ben started doing his thing, pump-faking and shifting in the pocket and buying extra time. On first-and-20 he hit Santonio for 14 yards. On third-and-six he found Santonio again for 13 yards for a first down. A few plays later, with the clock ticking, Ben hit Santonio 10 yards down the field, and Santonio spun and sprinted to the Arizona six-yard line. Now 48 seconds remained in the fourth quarter.

  To this point in the game we had used almost every play in our red-zone offense, and I absolutely hate running the same play twice in a game—I always believe that if defense sees a play once, it’s near impossible to fool them twice.

  On first down I called a play that I thought would win us the game. Ben pump-faked and then drilled a perfect pass to Santonio in the back of the end zone. Victory, I thought. But the ball slipped through Santonio’s hands.

  On the sideline I’m thinking, Shit, now what am I going to call? That was our Super Bowl ring right there. But then—and this happened in a matter of seconds—I remembered a play from earlier in the game that should have worked but was derailed because the Cardinals blitzed us and we didn’t pick it up. The name of the play was “74 Scat Flasher Z Level.” I quickly radioed it in to Ben.

  In the shotgun, Ben took the snap. Our line did its job, holding the four Cardinal rushers at bay. This meant Ben had time to work through his progression. He first looked to running back Willie Parker, who was covered in the flat. Then he spotted Hines Ward in the end zone. Cardinal defenders surrounded Hines, but Ben pumped the ball his way anyway. That made a few of the Arizona defensive backs turn in Hines’s direction. And that heartbeat of motion—a split-second move of the ball from where he would heave it—was all Ben needed.

  He spotted Santonio sprinting toward the right corner of the end zone. There were three defenders in front of Santonio, but Ben unleashed his fastball anyway. He later told me the moment he let it rip he thought the ball was going to be intercepted.

  But oh, what a pass it turned out to be. Ben placed it perfectly, high and outside, to a spot where only Santonio could snag it. Santonio threw his hands up and the ball hit his mitts perfectly. It was on our sideline and I was staring right at it. Santonio looked like a ballerina as he tapped his feet inbounds and fell out of the field of play.

  After the game everyone talked about the catch—everyone, that is, but me. I couldn’t believe the throw. To this day, I think that’s a play that only one player in NFL history was capable of making, and that’s Ben. He pump-fakes and delivers a fastball on the money as well as anyone in the game. That was unquestionably a Hall of Fame–worthy pass. Considering the magnitude of the moment, it should go down as one of the great throws in NFL history. We won the game 27–23 to capture our second Vince Lombardi Trophy in three years.

  Up to that time in my career, that was as good as it got for me as a play caller: winning a Super Bowl with a two-minute drive. We had a hell of a party that night at the Intercontinental Hotel in Tampa. My entire family was there, and we moved among three different ballrooms that each had a band playing.

  Late that night—or, early that morning, I should say—I spotted Ben. We had all been given Super Bowl robes and he was wearing his over his street clothes. He had a cigar hanging from his mouth and a big, beautiful smile plastered on his face. Such moments of triumph always seem to pass by too quickly, so I really tried to slow time down that night, to savor each interaction with each player, to hug my wife and kids especially hard as we partied the night away.

  But the feeling of winning a Super Bowl, for me at least, isn’t as much joy as it is pure relief. The losing Super Bowl team is always quickly forgotten, and you are acutely aware of that in the days leading up to the big game. The pressure is enormous. So when that final whistle blew and we were crowned world champions, I finally felt like I could relax and take my first deep breath in months.

  That feeling lasted for about three weeks. Even though I was actually booed during our victory parade in Pittsburgh—a fan yelled at me to “get a fullback,” to which I replied, “Never!”—we celebrated like it was a once-in-a-lifetime New Year’s Eve. But shortly after the parade the coaching staff had to start thinking about free agency, the NFL Combine, the draft, and the coming season. You can’t pat yourself on the back for too long in the NFL because you can bet your ass other teams aren’t. They’re working. We knew that. So after three weeks, we quit talking about the victory. It was time to move on, and we did.

  In 2010, Ben was suspended for the first four games of the season for violating the NFL conduct policy. In March of that year he had been investigated by police in Milledgeville, Georgia, for an alleged sexual assault that occurred in the women’s restroom of the Capital City nightclub. Ben emphatically told me nothing happened. I’m not a police officer and I wasn’t there; I’m Ben’s coach and it’s my job to prepare him to play football. No charges were ever filed against him, but the NFL suspended him for the first month of the 2010 season.

  I wasn’t allowed to speak directly to Ben during his suspension, but I knew he was working out with George Whitfield, a former college quarterback at Tiffin University in Ohio who specialized in training quarterbacks out of his own academy in San Diego. I had a relationship with George, so I would email him our practice scripts and our play script so Ben could keep his head in the game, even though he wasn’t allowed inside the Steelers practice facility. I also told George the different fundamentals I wanted Ben to focus on while he was away from the team. Ben’s early success actually stunted his growth, I thought, because he wasn’t working as diligently as he needed to be. He thought he had it all figured out. But he didn’t. I especially wanted Ben to shorten his stroke—his throwing motion—because he had a little too much wind-up and was taking too long to release the ball.

  Ben had never been a drill guy. But that month away from the game changed him, as it should have. So many times in life we don’t appreciate what we have until it is taken away from us, and I think during his suspension Ben fell in love with football all over again. He gained new respect for the game and a new respect for drill work. The gifted QBs oftentimes don’t work on fundamentals, because everything comes so natural to them. Ben fell into this category. But his approach changed during the suspension. On several occasions George reported to me that Ben was working hard and that he believed he’d be ready to play once the suspension was over.

  George was right: In Ben’s first game back against the Cleveland Browns, he completed 16 of 27 passes for 258 yards, three touchdowns, and one interception in our 28–10 win. He looked like he was in midseason form. Ben would finish the 2010 regular season with a 9–3 record, 3,200 yards passing, 17 touchdowns, and a career-low five interceptions. We entered the playoffs as the AFC’s number two seed.

  On October 3 of that season I celebrated my fifty-eighth birthday. This was significant because it made me what I called “bulletproof.” The NFL had inst
ituted a rule a few years earlier that stated if your years of service in the league plus your age added up to seventy-five, then you could retire and they would “bridge” you until you turned sixty-five (meaning they would pay for your health care and you could access a special “bridge” retirement account) and were eligible for Social Security and Medicare. So now, even if I lost my job, my family would still be financially set.

  The night I turned fifty-eight I called my old friend Carl Smith, a longtime NFL coach who was then the quarterback coach of the Seattle Seahawks. Smith’s college nickname was Tater and he’s three years older than me.

  “Tater, we made it, baby,” I said. “You know what? It’s different now. I don’t give a shit about what anybody thinks of my play calls. I don’t have to please anybody. I’m going to do whatever the hell I want now from here on out because it doesn’t matter.”

  Tater let out a good laugh. Thing was, I wasn’t really kidding.

  In the AFC Championship Game against the Jets, we held a 24–19 lead in the fourth quarter and we had the ball on their 40-yard line. The whistle for the two-minute warning had just blown and Ben was standing on the sideline next to me when I told him we were going for the win.

  “Screw a running play,” I said. “Kill shot time.”

  Ben completed a 14-yard pass to Antonio Brown to seal the victory. We were going to our second Super Bowl in three years.

  There is nothing worse than when the confetti falls on your shoulders after the Super Bowl and it’s not for you.

  We had a chance to win the franchise’s seventh title in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLV, on February 6, 2011. Trailing Green Bay by six points with 2:07 to play, we started a drive at our 13-yard line. After a five-yard reception by Hines Ward and two incomplete passes, Big Ben’s fourth-down pass was intercepted. We lost 31–25.

  In the offseason I was a little surprised I didn’t get any invitations to interview for a head coaching position. I know I’m not a head coach out of central casting—hey, I’ve never met a four-letter word I didn’t like—but man, I had just helped the Steelers reach two Super Bowls in three years with our offense. At this point I figured I’d probably never become a head coach, and I was fine with that. I was perfectly happy in Pittsburgh.