Todd Haley Finally ‘Drops A Dime’ And Calls Big Ben
Added on Feb 22, 2012 by Jack Thurman in
No Comments
One day after Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger went public with the fact that he’d yet to talk to his new offensive coordinator, Todd Haley ‘dropped a dime’ and mended fences with his star player. This is a good career move for Haley who was known for his somewhat bristly personality in dealing with players when he was a head coach in Kansas City. Roethlisberger wasn’t happy about the decision to send previous offensive coordinator Bruce Arians packing.
On Monday, a Pittsburgh newspaper reported that Haley and Roethisberger had yet to meet and ‘Big Ben’ was responding like one of the sorority girls he spurned commenting “He still hasn’t called yet” with what the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette obsverved was a ‘discouraged tone in his voice’.
Apparently Haley called and brought him flowers and chocolates in the next 24 hours since multiple team sources have confirmed that the two men have ‘recently met’. That’s good news since Roethlisberger was noncommittal about his new offensive coordinator when asked last week. ‘Big Ben’ had been working the phones of his league contacts trying to get the skinny on Haley and said that comments had been “good, bad and indifferent.” To his credit, he said he was reserving judgement:
“I’ve heard a lot of things and I’m looking forward to meeting him and forming my own opinion.”
Haley put a positive spin on his hire in a press conference last week:
“Transition is always a little — I wouldn’t even say difficult — but there’s an uncomfortable aspect to newness. But that’s not always a bad thing. I think it’ll be a great thing in this case, and he’s going to figure out that we’re just trying to make him as good as he can possibly can be.”
“Not many players that I’ve known have ever had an issue with that.”
Bruce Arians was made the scapegoat for the Steelers’ early playoff exit and was not retained. This made Roethlisberger unhappy but so far he’s handled it like a professional despite his misgivings about Haley and his phone punctuality. Arians has landed on his feet as well, quickly accepting a job as the offensive coordinator of the Indianapolis Colts.
