Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said that he’s “pretty sure” he wants to return to the team for the 2021 season and is willing to restructure his contract. Due to a drop in revenue as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Roethlisberger’s $41.2 million cap hit for next season presents a problem for the Steelers. Roethlisberger said on Thursday, “I want to do everything I can and made that very clear to them from the very beginning that it was my idea to basically help the team however I can this year… I am pretty sure I want to go one more year [because] I think I can do it and give us a real chance [at] winning.”
Earlier Thursday, Steelers’ CEO Art Rooney II told reporters the team have left the door open for Roethlisberger to return, but it will depend on whether adjustments are made to his contract. “I think we’ve been up front with Ben in letting him know that we couldn’t have him back under the current contract,” Rooney said. “I think he understands we have some work to do there. We’ll have more conversations internally, and we’ll have more conversations with Ben. We’ll have to know what the cap number is to finalize some of those decisions. With Ben, we owe it to him to have a conversation about how he wants to end his career, and we intend to do that… I think we’d like to see Ben back for another year if that can work. But as we said, there’s a lot of work to be done if that can happen. There may need to be decisions on both ends for that to happen.”
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