Former QB Brian St. Pierre explains why he chose the Ravens over the Steelers: ‘Pittsburgh was crazy’
Life as an NFL player can be brutal at times. Not everyone can be like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, playing for over 15 years and earning the accolades and money. Most of the time, players find out pretty quickly how big a business the NFL really is, get signed to a team, never play with them, and eventually end up out of the league. Nobody sees themselves as a career backup. Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Brian St. Pierre knows this all too well, as he barely played in the league despite an eight-year career. However, that didn’t stop him from pursuing opportunities.
St. Pierre was drafted by the Steelers in the fifth round of the 2003 draft. Any hopes he had of becoming a starter ended shortly thereafter, as Pittsburgh drafted Ben Roethlisberger in the first round the following year. St. Pierre spent the first two years of his career with the Steelers before he was waived by the Baltimore Ravens just before the start of the 2005 season. In a recent interview with the Recruiting Board YouTube channel, St. Pierre explained the process and why he felt compelled to move to Baltimore.
“They actually released me at the end of the third year of camp to bring me back the next week, but they wanted to try to make the roster,” St. Pierre said. “So I made the final cuts, then they made one cut after another roster-wise and tried to bring me back. Then Baltimore picked me up. I had to go. As a young guy, you don’t have rights, if they claim you off waivers, you have to go.”
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This seems to be what happened with the Steelers and their 53-man roster after training camp, but maybe a player they liked got released by another team and was available. So, they released St. Pierre to clear room on the roster to bring in this other player, thinking they could either sign St. Pierre to the practice squad or bring him back sooner or later in some other way. However, St. Pierre had to go through waivers before he could return to the Steelers, and he couldn’t do that because the Ravens claimed him.
This is a process that still happens often today, teams’ rosters are never set right away after final cuts as they may still be looking to add at certain positions. It so happened that the Steelers’ plan backfired and they were unable to retain St. Pierre. Although he could have returned to the Steelers in 2006, St. Pierre explains in the same interview how he could have come back earlier, but he decided not to, and Pittsburgh wasn’t too happy with that.
“I went to Baltimore and was on the practice squad for the first couple of weeks. Ben got hurt and Pittsburgh called me back, and I turned them down,” St. Pierre said. “I turned them down because Ozzie Newsome in Baltimore said, ‘We’re going to get you on the roster.’ I saw more potential. At the time, Kyle Boller and Anthony Wright were competing for a first-round pick at quarterback. I went with Kyle Boller, he wasn’t Ben Roethlisberger. Saw a potential opportunity there, so I stayed in Baltimore, and Pittsburgh was upset.”
The injury Roethlisberger is talking about was suffered in Week 5 against the San Diego Chargers, causing him to miss the next week and a few other games that year before it aggravated. It’s clear the Steelers thought highly of St. Pierre if they wanted him back so badly and were so disappointed when he decided to stay with the Ravens. That kind of animosity between the rival teams still exists today and has certainly played a part in his upset.
However, the Steelers certainly got the last laugh in this exchange, as they managed to recover from Roethlisberger’s injury and go on to win the Super Bowl that year. St. Pierre, on the other hand, left the Ravens after that season and returned to the Steelers for the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Unfortunately, and almost unbelievably, St. Pierre left the team again and spent the 2008 season with the Arizona Cardinals, the team the Steelers defeated in that year’s Super Bowl.
There may have been no one as unlucky as St. Pierre, who missed both of the Steelers’ Super Bowls and never got a chance to start. However, he still had a long career to be proud of. His story is just another example of how the stars can be so mismatched for some players. For every Cinderella ending, there are ten horror stories. The Steelers may have been upset when St. Pierre chose their arch rival over them, but that’s just another part of his own fairy tale that ended with a Lombardi Trophy.
