Ben Roethlisberger is the best QB out of the 2004 NFL draft

Thanks, Pro. The first thing my opponent mentions is that a QB is indeed judged by whether or not they achieve Superbowl success. For instance, he mentioned the likes of Dan Marino and Jim Kelly being harshly criticized for never winning a ring. However, all this does is prove my point: that just because a QB does not win a championship or achieve a lot of success in the playoffs does not necessarily indicate his ability as a player. Nobody denies Marino's skill despite not winning a championship. Similarly, LeBron James is often cited as the best basketball player in the NBA, though he's never gone to the championship and has extremely limited experience in the playoffs barely making it there in his tenure as a professional. On the other hand, Robert Horry has 7 rings while LeBron has 0. Does that make Horry the better player? Absolutely not. I expanded on this further in describing what would happen to the win percentage of the Cleveland Browns if Peyton Manning were traded to their team today. Would they go on to win the Superbowl? They probably wouldn't even make the playoffs. The point here is that while it undoubtedly is to Ben's credit that he's achieved post-season success, it's hardly a strong contention in favor of him being the superior QB -- especially when you crunch the numbers and see no significant advantage in comparison to Rivers. Next, Pro challenges the idea that the Steelers are/were a better team in recent years than the Chargers. On paper, the Steelers should have been the superior team. For instance, in addition to Big Ben, there are several household names - particularly on the Wide Receiving end with them having Hines Ward, Santonio Holmes (in recent past seasons) and Limas Sweed. No other team in the NFL could boast having two superbowl MVPs at the Wide Receiver position. In other words, Ben was set up to succeed. Antonio Gates is the only big name Charger receiver. As I explained in the last round, the Chargers hosting LaDainian Tomlinson essentially made their team focused on being dominant on the ground. However despite Tomlinson's tremendous success, Rivers became increasingly known for his brilliant passing game and racking up big numbers and breaking several Charger records, including for most TD passes in a season (34). The fact that Rivers has put up the numbers he did while Tomlinson consistently racked up the most rushing yards year after year is a testament to Rivers' ability to optimize both the running and passing game. Yes, the Steelers are a great organization set up to be successful, which was certainly not the case with the Chargers. Let's consider why Phil Rivers is on the Chargers in the first place. The Chargers were among the worst teams in the NFL, and it's only because the #1 overall draft pick from 2004 Eli Manning demanded to be traded that Rivers was put on the team to begin with! The Steelers have not only one of the most impressive young coaches the NFL has seen, but a spectacular defense and lots of pro-bowl worthy talent. Pro brings up the fact that in both 06 and 09, the Chargers had the superior record in the regular season but the Steelers went on to win the Playoffs and Superbowl, respectively. This is allegedly proof that Big Ben is better in high pressure situations. First off, Pro is talking about the wrong seasons. The Steelers won the Superbowl after the 2005 regular season, meaning one of the stats he's talking about isn't even applicable considering I only gave stats for 06 - 07 and not 05 - 06. Pro makes the same mistake twice; the Steelers won the Superbowl after the 2008 season meaning they had a winning record (12-4) while the Chargers did not. In other words, you can scrap this contention of Pro's all-together because his analysis was referring to the wrong years, meaning these arguments have no weight. Next, we move on to the meat and potatoes of the debate: the statistics. Pro essentially tries to diminish and take away from Rivers' achievements because he puts up better numbers than Ben. Fair enough, but let's see if his analysis holds any weight. First, Pro says "It is impossible to say how River's would have performed as a rookie" and then notes "Because of this I believe it is reasonable to assume that a younger more inexperienced Philip Rivers starting would have produced a lower passing TDs per game..." etc. Well, which is it? Either we can make assumptions about how Rivers would have fared in his rookie season or we could not. Assuming we go with Pro's suggestion that it'd be impossible to know what kind of numbers Rivers would have put up, then all we have to go on are the seasons for which Rivers started: 06 - 10. In that case, Rivers puts up better numbers than Ben, as I've explained, meaning Pro has no real defense. Rivers put up better numbers - period. This is especially due to the fact that Pro insists QBs only improve as they gain NFL experience. Of course Ben Roethlisberger himself proves my opponent wrong; Ben's QB rating was 104 in 2007, and dropped 24 points to 80 in 2008 (!). I'd also like to completely dismantle Pro's suggestion that statistic 1E is irrelevant, i.e. comparing the stats for each QB this season. He says Ben hasn't had time to "find his groove yet" considering he's only played 4 game thus far; however, Ben was not out of the game due to injury but because of personal conduct issue. He was still able to attend and play in every practice, meaning he is not recovering from injury or other severe absence. Moreover I could easily then make the argument that we should say Ben has had two more YEARS to find his groove compared to Rivers given Ben started two years earlier. This is a bad attempt at discrediting the fact that Rivers is destroying Ben's numbers this season even if you just look at the game averages. There is no reason to discount it. Next, Pro provides more misinformation in an attempt to distort the facts. For instance he says Ben has 17 fourth quarter comebacks compared to Rivers' 11. I said Rivers had 11 fourth quarter comebacks THAT SEASON ALONE; obviously Pro's number of 17 would be impossible given a 16-game regular season. Nevertheless, none of the points from my first contention have been adequately refuted. Pro never refuted the fact that Rivers averages more TD passes per game in terms of his entire career, or yards per game. Even if we acknowledge the Steelers and Chargers having an equal team in terms of performance, Rivers puts up better numbers. Pro can't deny his consistently higher overall QB rating either. Pro wrote, "Finally contention 2 leaves out Big Ben's season's when Rivers was on the bench which I find unfair." I have no idea what this is referring to. Ben was completely average during his first two NFL seasons -- what would Pro like to discuss? Ben's 17 TD and 11 INT rookie season? Rivers put up way better numbers than that in his first real season (22 TDs, 9 INTs) and again it makes no sense to presume he would have done a lot worse just because Peyton Manning did. At that point he had little to no NFL experience just as Ben didn't. Playing in practice doesn't count, and if it does, then Pro has no business telling us to consider Ben's few game absence from the beginning of this season since he got to play in practice. There is a lack of consistency in these arguments. While Pro mentions that Ben is only slightly behind Rivers in QB rating (he's at number 8 while Rivers is at number 2), he doesn't mention that Rivers is only slightly behind Ben in terms of NFL game win percentage -- Ben is 2nd, and Rivers is 4th. In other words, Rivers is closer to Ben in his achievements than the other way around. I'm out of characters for now, but will wrap up my response to Pro's conclusion in the final round. http://en.wikipedia.org... http://wiki.answers.com...