He might have been able to throw touchdowns, but he couldn’t bait a hook.
Justin Moore‘s “Bait A Hook” might be one of the singer’s best-known hits, despite the fact that the song peaked at #17 on the Billboard charts back in 2011.
But did you know that it was inspired by former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger?
The song was written by Justin, along with co-writers Rhett Akins and Jeremy Stevens. And back in 2020, Justin had Rhett on The Justin Moore Podcast where they discussed (among many other things), how the song “Bait A Hook” came to be.
According to Rhett, he got the idea after a young lady told him a story about going on a date with an NFL quarterback who just wasn’t country enough:
“This female had been hanging out with this particular football player and he’d been texting her and wanting to hang out more and she said she really wasn’t that into him.
I was like ‘Really? That’s surprising, I mean he’s a big NFL star, you’d think you’d be into something like that.’
And she goes ‘Nah, man he just ain’t country enough for me. We went fishing the other day and he couldn’t even bait his own hook.'”
Now, Justin and Rhett didn’t want to directly name the player they were talking about, but they did give a few clues.
First of all, Justin mentions that the unnamed player (who was still playing at the time of the interview in 2020) had won a few Super Bowls by the time the song was written. So that narrows it down to only players who were active in 2020 who had won Super Bowls before 2011 – and Roethlisberger had won Super Bowls in 2005 and 2008.
And Rhett also reveals that it was a quarterback:
“He can’t bait a hook but he can throw a touchdown.”
But then Justin pretty much confirms that it was Ben Roethlisberger:
“It happens to be the team that I root for, so I’ve decided until he retires maybe I’ll just leave this be.”
Anybody who knows Justin knows that he’s a die-hard Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and he’s even performed at Steelers games quite a few times in the past.
So there you have it: Ben Roethlisberger is the NFL player who “can’t even bait a hook.” And maybe now that Big Ben has officially retired from Justin’s favorite team, he’ll confirm for the world that Roethlisberger was the inspiration for one of his biggest songs.
I’m still not sure if Big Ben can fit in a Prius though…
Check out Justin’s interview with Rhett Akins on The Justin Moore Podcast:
