The excitement that rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger might bring Sunday in Miami to his first NFL start is not what co-captain Alan Faneca prefers.

No disrespect to his young quarterback, but excitement is not what Faneca is feeling at the moment.

"Exciting?" Faneca replied to a question in an are-you-crazy kind of way. "No, it's not exciting. Do you want to go work with some little young kid who's just out of college?"

That certainly put the Roethlisberger-for-Tommy Maddox issue in perspective. While others may get a thrill from watching the only quarterback drafted in the first round by the Steelers in 24 years make his first start, an All-Pro guard knows the reality that faces Roethlisberger and the rest of the Steelers.

"Everybody's got to do a little more," Faneca said. "Everybody's got to help out, got to do a little more, do a little extra, take that extra step, put the extra work in this week and rally around him and help out.

"It's a learning process for him. He's a No. 1 pick, he's fresh out of college and that's the big thing. He's throwing in a new offense. He's not in that Miami, Ohio, offense that he sat in for three years, four years. He has to learn that, too, so there's a lot to soak in. It's like every play you get better, you see things, you start to realize things, how a play works, how defenses react to it. It's just a process."

There's a reason no rookie quarterback has taken a team to a Super Bowl. Roethlisberger becomes the first rookie to start at quarterback for the Steelers since Bubby Brister lost his only two starts in 1986 (trivia answer: Antwaan Randle El is the most recent rookie to play quarterback for the Steelers, in 2002).

Faneca wasn't picking on Roethlisberger, he just knows what it's like to be a rookie.

"Any rookie coming into the league," Faneca said. "When I was first in the league, you come in, you learn, you see things and you say 'oh, that's how it happens, that's how it works.' You learn, you get better, you start feeling more comfortable and you start getting better."

How much better he needs to get is the question. Roethlisberger believes practice will make him better, if not perfect. He'll get to run the first team all week rather than take a few snaps here and there, which means reintroducing himself to starting receivers Hines Ward and Plaxico Burress.

"It will help me get more familiar with the offense. I haven't really been able to throw many balls to Hines and Plax. This will help me get on the same page with them," Roethlisberger said.

It is not known whether the game plan will be scaled back for him, but it usually is for rookie quarterbacks making their first starts, particularly in the third game of the season.

"It's going to be frustrating sometimes," Ward said. "We've been through a lot of battles with Tommy. The timing and some of the little things we did on the field, you're probably going to lose that a little bit until Big Ben gets used to us wideouts and what we see and stuff."

Ward, who leads the AFC with 250 yards receiving, is one who acknowledges the thrills of working with a rookie quarterback.

"Big Ben's our quarterback now. ... It's going to make it real exciting now. That's why we drafted him. The guy's getting his early opportunity and I'm sure he's going to make the most of it.

"Being one of the leaders on the team, I have to try to do the best I can. I have all the confidence in the world he's going to go in there and do a tremendous job. [With] him taking the reps this week with the first group, he's going to do nothing but continue to get better. I'm looking forward to him going out and starting his first game."

Roethlisberger is too, even if he painfully remembers the first time he started a game in college. It came in 2001 as a redshirt freshman at Miami (Ohio).

"At Michigan. I got a broken nose, threw an interception. It was rough. But I learned a lot from it."

Roethlisberger went on that year to make second-team all-conference and set a school record with 3,105 yards passing.