The new face of the NFL

By Jared Trexler

Shaun Alexander will stiff arm defenders on the cover of Madden '07, following the likes of Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick and Daunte Culpepper on the front of America's top video game.

The selection of Alexander is fitting. It stays with the game's tradition of taking a marquee name to attract massive sales. It also, possibly by pure luck or maybe the beginning of a scary trend, continues the selection of players who haven't "Won."

And I don't mean the lowercase word ("won") that signifies a player who is part of a division-winning club that makes constant cameos in the postseason marked with the improbable trip to a Super Bowl. These players leave the field season after season as a loser, despite gaudy numbers and lofty praise.

The above names are all great players, superstars of the country's most popular sport. They've all won.

Tom Brady has "Won." While the stats or the highlight-reel material may not reach the standards of Vick or McNabb, Brady has that instinct, the team-first personality, the "it" that is preached up and down a league with few players to fit the mold.

Until now.

Brady has become a grizzled (literally) veteran with multiple Super Bowl rings, a permanent vacation spot in Honolulu and his pick of the glamorous "I'm hot and I know it" litter.

The NFL thought it had its new face in Eli Manning -- a quarterback with a signal-caller's pedigree playing in the bright lights of the league's top media market.

The league was close. It had the right draft but the wrong player.

If Madden '07 was searching for the NFL's new face to don its cover, it was close. It had the right game but the wrong player.

Ben Roethlisberger has the cannon. The stats. The wins. The ring. And he is two years into a career in Pittsburgh that will rival the success of Terry Bradshaw.

Before I get attacked by my trusted colleagues for galloping on my high horse, let me finish. I'm not calling Roethlisberger the best quarterback in the NFL. I think he belongs in the league's top 10, but is several years away from grabbing Brady's mantle.

However, no one can argue that Big Ben wins, and does so in a way that pales in comparison to EVERY quarterback in the league other than Brady.

And in the end that's what the NFL is all about. It's how legends are made. Winning embodies excellence, and the league foams at the mouth for success stories.

Those players are not only marketable, but vital to the league's vitality. They are few and far between.

Big Ben is one of those players. Players around the league know it. Coaches know it. The big wigs of pigskin know it.

Roethlisberger is the new face of the NFL.

A rookie-record 98.1 quarterback rating. 34 touchdowns to 20 interceptions in two seasons. Steelers receivers, running backs and tight ends have caught 64.7 percent of the passes thrown in their direction from Big Ben.

Those numbers only scratch the surface. The quarterback is 28-4 as a starter. He is 5-1 in the playoffs. His arm was the difference in three straight playoff road victories in Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Denver. He throws blocks (on Antwaan Randle El's Super Bowl touchdown toss to Hines Ward). He makes tackles (saving Pittsburgh's season with a shoestring stab at Colts cornerback Nick Harper).

Even when he doesn't play his best (i.e. the Super Bowl) he is involved in game-changing plays. He ran for a score in that game and improvised his way to a long completion to Ward that set up that touchdown.

The team is just 3-3 in games he hasn't started the last two seasons. If winning and losing doesn't knock the unjust criticism that Roethlisberger is a product of the system, I'm not sure what will.

The Steelers were a good club that needed Roethlisberger's touch to put them over the top.

I just don't understand the voice of unreason that loudly proclaims that Pittsburgh was a team bursting from its seams with talent. In the Super Bowl, its backfield consisted of a retiring bruiser and an undrafted speedster. Two ex-college quarterbacks started at receiver.

Ben made it work.

"He is one of our leaders," said Ward.

Now that Jerome Bettis has driven the Bus into the sunset, Pittsburgh is Roethlisberger's team.

And the NFL couldn't be happier.

He, like Brady, will watch McNabb's latest soap opera or Vick's newest rant about the west coast offense grab the headlines. But when the NFL needs a face for its product, it will call Big Ben.

The reason?

He just wins, baby.