get me my hat

If there is anything I hope becomes a new catchphrase for this NFL season, I hope it is those four words. Yahoo's Michael Silver reports that just before taking the field for the game-winning drive in overtime for the Steelers Thursday night, Ben Roethlisberger asked a ballboy on the sidelines to "get me my hat" presumably because he expected to soon be telling the cameras and media members surrounding him how he just won another spectacular game in the clutch.

Big Ben has been taking plenty of heat lately for his sometimes unexplainable decision-making, for his propensity to hold the ball far too long, and for his general ability to strike fear into the hearts of Steelers fans. Still, you cannot tell me that if he is the QB of your football team, you wouldn't instantly feel better as soon as he had the ball in his hands with 2 minutes or less. Does he ever fail to come through? It might not be pretty. He might never make it look as easy as Brees or Brady or Manning. But the man wins and he puts on that hat to tell you how he did almost every time.

Clutch moments becoming old hat for Big Ben

PITTSBURGH – The Tennessee Titans called heads, the coin came up tails, and while 65,110 fans at Heinz Field roared their powerful roars and waved their Terrible Towels, Ben Roethlisberger(notes) sidled up to a ballboy and made a four-word request.

Get me my hat.

A brutally physical NFL season opener between the defending Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans was deadlocked and headed for overtime late Thursday night, and the quarterback’s statement carried an unspoken but obvious tagline: Get me my hat, because I’m about to take us down the field for the winning points, and I want to cover up my sweaty hair when I do that postgame interview with Andrea Kremer.

And what did the ballboy do?

“He got me my hat,” Roethlisberger said about half an hour later as he undressed at his locker, grinning like a schoolboy who’d just drained a game-winning jumper at the recess bell.

Smart kid, that ballboy. Clutch dude, that quarterback. Right now, with apologies to the NFL’s two reigning greats in New England and Indy, is there any passer you’d rather have with the ball in his hands and the game on the line than Big Ben? ...

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