Joey Porter Sr says former Steelers teammate Ben Roethlisberger is not ‘a good person’ | Pittsburgh Steelers
Joey Porter Sr. says Ben Roethlisberger, the quarterback he won the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Super Bowl with, is not “a good person.”
Porter was speaking on a podcast during Super Bowl week when he made the comments. He and Roethlisberger won Super Bowl XL with Pittsburgh at the end of the 2005 season.
Porter said Roethlisberger and another former Steeler, James Harrison, broke a code by criticizing Mike Tomlin, who left as Pittsburgh’s head coach in January after 19 seasons at the helm, on their own podcasts.
“[Harrison] broke the brotherhood,” Porter said on Cameron Heyward’s Not Just Football podcast. [Roethlisberger] definitely broke the brotherhood. Out of anyone who should speak, he should never pick up a microphone and really talk about Steeler business. Because if we’re talking Steelers business, his ass is a foul of all fouls. The shit he did is a mistake among all mistakes. He’s not a good teammate.
“I won the Super Bowl with him, but this person is just not a good teammate. He knows that. Everyone in the Steelers building knows that, but we protected him because I only won one Super Bowl and he was my quarterback. So, do I like my quarterback? Yeah, but is he a good person? No.”
Porter backed up his comments by claiming that Roethlisberger once refused to sign memorabilia for his teammates’ families.
“He was telling people, ‘No, I’m not going to sign that,'” Porter said. “So once he did that, who did they come and tell? The captain. When he first did it to Chris Hoke, I was like, ‘Damn, that’s messed up, man.’ I picked it up from Hoke, took it there and told him to sign it. But when he did that to Aaron Smith, now I gotta get a date [with Roethlisberger]. Like, you’re a rookie, you’re a young guy.
“You can’t tell my vets you’re too cool to sign for my vets. Who the hell is too cool to sign for your teammate? I’m not a fan.”
Porter added that Roethlisberger was named Steelers team captain, rather than being voted on by his fellow players.
“He got to the era where they just gave you the ‘C’ – because if he wasn’t captain, he’d probably have a fit. But no one is going to vote for him as captain because he has no captaincy qualities,” Porter said.
Before Tomlin’s departure from the Steelers, Roethlisberger suggested his former coach be fired, saying it was time for the team to “clean house.”
Roethlisberger later walked back his comments. “Just because I said it’s time for new things, that just means I think Coach Tomlin, if he wants to move on, he has every right to move on — it’s not that they should,” he said.
Porter isn’t the only teammate to criticize Roethlisberger. After the quarterback was suspended for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy following allegations of sexual assault, for which Roethlisberger was never criminally charged, Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward said “the suspension is warranted.” Current Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph also appears to support Porter’s comments on social media.
Porter left the Steelers in 2007, and Roethlisberger admitted in 2010 that he had not performed well in the past.
“I got caught up in being Big Ben all the time,” Roethlisberger said. “I lost track of who Ben Roethlisberger was. It’s not something I’m proud of…I was gaining everything, but I was losing a lot of what I was raised to do.”
Porter was a three-time All Pro linebacker during his time with the Steelers and retained ties to the team in retirement. He was their outside linebackers coach from 2015 to 2018, and his son Joey Jr has played cornerback for the team since they drafted him in 2023.
