Whelp, can’t say we didn’t see this one coming.
After 18 seasons in the NFL, Ben Roethlisberger is officially retiring.
The 39-year-old had been hinting at it all season long, and it was good to see his team make the playoffs in his final year as both a Pittsburgh Steeler, and an NFL player.
He made the announcement in a video he posted to Twitter:
“The journey has been exhilarating, fueled by a spirit of competition, yet the time has come to clean out my locker, hang up my cleats and continue to be all I can be to my wife and children.
I retire from football a truly grateful man.”
The man will most likely be a Hall of Famer, as he’s racked up two Super Bowl wins, won a Rookie of the Year, and has the fifth most passing yards in NFL history at 64,088.
Now, we just gotta figure out what ol “Big Ben” will be doing with his free time.
Maybe it’s time he finally learns how to fish?
As it turns out, Justin Moore’s smash hit “Bait A Hook,” written by Moore with Rhett Akins and Jeremy Stover, it was actually inspired by a conversation Akins had with a girl he knew from Georgia who went on a date with a certain NFL quarterback.
On Moore’s podcast a couple years back, the conversation went like this:
Rhett: “Right now, who it’s about is doing pretty good… he’s an NFL football player. He can’t bait a hook but he can throw a touchdown.”
Justin: “It happens to be the team that I root for so I’ve decided until he retires, maybe I’ll just leave this be.”
Of course, Justin roots for the Pittsburgh Steelers, but Rhett went on to tell the story about how he came up with the title:
Rhett: “This female had been hanging out with this particular football player and he had been texting her and wanting to hang out more, and she said she wasn’t really that into him.
So I said ‘really, that’s surprising, he’s a big NFL star, you think you’d be into something like that’ and she said ‘nah man, he just ain’t country enough for me.
We went fishin’ the other day and he couldn’t even bait his own hook.’”
Yep… considering Justin Moore is a big time Steelers fan, it’s pretty clear that Roethlisberger was the target for the song.
I guess ol’ Ben’s gonna have to take up golf or something else , because Lord knows he’s gonna hurt himself fishing.
Then again, retirement is the perfect time to learn.
