BALTIMORE, Maryland – Legendary Steelers Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said today that he was successfully able to avoid a raven that was trying to get him to look at it. He claims that the large black bird followed him for some hours as he was walking through a city park and that it appeared to be acting intentionally.
“If there’s a raven around and you look when it wants you to, that means you’re going to die soon. So there was no way I was doing that.” said Roethlisberger, who famously played 18 seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers, winning them two Super Bowls before his retirement in 2022.
The former Offensive Rookie of the Year went on to say that the raven, the largest member of the corvid family, was undeniably trying to get his attention because it followed him for an extended period of time and maintained a stream of antagonistic vocalizations.
“Those birds are omens of death. Everybody knows that. And it was obviously trying to get me to look. It kept flying to the branch right behind me and making all those weird sounds that ravens make. It had to have been for me- there was no one else around.”
The raven, considered to be a damned soul in German folklore, occasionally flew within Roethlisberger’s peripheral vision, but generally remained behind him throughout the encounter.
“I noticed that my back was to the setting sun, so it was casting these long shadows in front of me as it flew from tree to tree. That helped to know when to duck or look away. A few times I saw it out of the corner of my eye a bit, but that doesn’t count.”
Similar encounters with ravens are thought to be common but underreported, which makes sense because the birds are known to be the ghosts of people who were murdered and did not receive Christian burials, as the future hall-of-famer explained to this 5th Quarter Sports reporter who happened to be walking by.
“So it’s a good thing I dodged it- you don’t want to mess with these things. People don’t talk about it much, but when Cain killed Abel, a raven told him how to bury the body.”
