Keith Butler instructs rookie linebacker Howard Jones during a preseason game this past August. — GETTY

BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC

News: Keith Butler will, indeed, be the Steelers’ new defensive coordinator, according to a report by Gerry Dulac in the Post-Gazette. That corroborates the information that led me to write on this site in a Saturday piece that Butler would be the choice to replace Dick LeBeau. An announcement by the team, per the report, could come Tuesday.

UPDATE 11:02 a.m.: The Steelers make this official.

Views: There’s nothing not to like about this move.

Butler, 58, is immensely qualified for this opportunity. Overqualified, actually. There aren’t many NFL positional coaches who stay a dozen years in one role, let alone one place. But Butler has served as the Steelers’ linebackers coach since 2003 — hired by Bill Cowher — and did likewise for the Browns the previous four seasons. Some will attach a stigma to that, but that’s unfair. Several teams offered Butler defensive coordinator interviews and even jobs, and he turned them down, in part because of his loyalty to Mike Tomlin and the Rooneys, in part — probably a larger part — because the team compensated him well to stay put. Regardless, he could have been doing this job somewhere else two, three years ago, maybe further back.

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Dick LeBeau calls signals on the Steelers’ sideline during a Nov. 17 game this season in Nashville. — GETTY

BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC

News: Dick LeBeau has left the Steelers, according to the Urbana Daily Citizen in his native Ohio. He told the paper, “I’m resigning my position, not retiring,” and called it “a mutual parting.”

Views: So much for status quo this offseason.

LeBeau, 77, is nothing less than a legend with the Steelers’ franchise, not least of which was for presiding over two Super Bowl champions and dominating, innovative defenses. And he never should be the focus of singular blame for how far that defense fell the past three years. That had far more to do with a crumbling secondary and, preceding that, a lack of emphasis on the secondary in recent draft. The man had a tremendous run.

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Ray Rice and Janay Palmer arrive at an Atlantic City court in May 2014. — GETTY

BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC

News: The NFL was all but completely exonerated in its handling of the Ray Rice case by a 96-page report just released by former FBI director Robert Mueller. The headline finding: “We found no evidence that anyone at the NFL had or saw the in-elevator video before it was publicly shown.”

Views: Oh, do at least try to act surprised.

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Ben Roethlisberger walks off the field after his fourth-quarter interception Saturday night. — GETTY

BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC

One last look at the Steelers’ (for real) last game …

• Ben Roethlisberger apologized to pretty much everyone who’s ever known a 412 or 724 area code Saturday night, including “the fans, my teammates, the organization, the Rooneys and the coaches.” And his explanation for that was that he “didn’t play well enough to win.”

The latter is indisputable, obviously, as is any assessment that Ben wasn’t at his best.

But was he that bad?

Depends on how one would like to dole out the blame, I suppose.

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