Ben Roethlisberger is a future Hall of Famer.

Let me just get that out of the way right now, and state it unequivocally: Ben is a future Hall of Fame quarterback.

Why do I bother making this obvious statement?

Well, with the recent slanderous Sports Illustrated article (rebuffed eloquently by our own Jim Racalto), as well as a lot of noise that has been bubbling under the surface about some of Ben’s less than stellar performances over the last few weeks of the season, a question began to percolate in my subconscious.

In the hallowed virtual halls of SCU, Joe Kuzma and I briefly bounced this question back and forth.

What question?

Well, it’s simply this: does Ben deserve some criticism for the way he’s played this year?

We can be honest here in the Nation, right?

This is a safe place, where we can have rational, intelligent discourse… isn’t it? (Stop laughing!)

Why would I even think these thoughts?

I’ll give you just a couple of examples.

Philadelphia, Baltimore Part I, Buffalo, and the third quarter of Baltimore Part II.

Here are some numbers – 62.4, 67.3, 37.8.

Those are the QB ratings Ben had for Philly, Baltimore and Buffalo.

Calculating his QB rating for the third quarter of Baltimore II, where he threw two bad INT’s, Ben compiled a 32.8 rating on 4-of-7 passing and 55 yards (and no touchdowns).

That’s the bad side of things.

In those three games (and part of a fourth), Ben wasn’t very good.

Is that all on Ben?

Is Ben just having off days, making bad decisions, playing poorly – or, is there more to that story?

First, let’s try and make some assumptions about Big Ben. He is a competitor, and he plays the quarterback position with the mentality of a linebacker. He pushes things, extends things, and sometimes that ends in amazingly spectacular plays, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Is it simply his need to compete? His desire to win that drives him? Is it because he wants the attention, the accolades, and the glory?

I don’t think it’s anywhere near that simple.

I think there is more to the story than that.

The truth is that for most of Ben’s career he has not had the greatest supporting cast. He had Jerome Bettis at the tail-end of his career, and he had Willie Parker, who was kind of a super-fast one-trick pony. Rashard Mendenhall was serviceable, but certainly not a great back.

Now he has Le’Veon. Joe Kuzma wrote a piece about that relationship, but you can certainly see how Le’Veon is a step up over Willie Parker and Rashard Mendenhall.

As far as receivers go, he’s usually had at least a solid number one, and a decent number two, and for most of his career, other than 2004 and this year, he had Heath. (C’mon, say it with me one more time – “HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEATH!”).

He had Plaxico Burress, Hines Ward, Santonio Holmes, Mike Wallace and Antwaan Randle El at various points in his career, and really, other than when Hines and Santonio were together, and maybe the few years of “Young Money” (when he had Emmanuel Sanders, AB and Mike Wallace) he really hasn’t had more than one really stable, consistent number two receiver.

But like I said, he always had Heath.

Still, I think an argument can be made that Ben could have developed a “I need to do it” mentality. He probably had that attitude anyway, and as I said earlier, he plays quarterback like a linebacker – aggressively. It’s part of his makeup, part of who he is. He plays the position with reckless abandon, and it’s given us moments like no other quarterback we’ve ever had.

And it’s given us moments like the one at near the end of the Dolphins game.

Right now, he has Antonio Brown, Le’Veon Bell, and a cast of thousands, or so it seems: Ladarius Green, Jesse James, Demarcus Ayers, Cobi Hamilton, Eli Rogers and Sammie Coates make up the remaining receiving corps.

Ben was without Martavis Bryant this season, and had very little of Markus Wheaton available.

So even though Ben has great support right now, he still doesn’t have depth.

Yes, these guys have stepped up, and performed, but they’ve also made a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes have put Ben in a bad position.

There has been more than one occasion where it was clear that an interception was caused by a receiver running the wrong route, or not fighting for the ball. Ben expects these guys to make plays, and he gives them the opportunity to do so.

Antonio Brown has made his chops by succeeding at “combat catches”, but as promising as these young guys might be, they aren’t AB; and they don’t have that same connection with Ben… yet.

Does Ben deserve criticism?

To me, there is only one-way to look at this – you can’t cheer for him when he does something amazing by extending the play, and then rip him for doing the exact same thing when it doesn’t work out.

Ben is a competitor.

He wants to win, almost certainly more than we want him to win. He is aggressive, he takes chances, and when it works, we love him for it.

We need to love him for it even when it doesn’t work.

You can’t praise the good, and rip the bad when they both come from the same place – his personality and mental outlook on how to play the game.

Yes, we can moan and sigh when he throws a bad pick. But would you honestly have Ben stop being Ben?

I know I sure wouldn’t.