Getting to Ben Roethlisberger is only half the job. Bringing him down often is the more difficult assignment.

New York Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo showed his troops clip after clip of the Steelers quarterback escaping other defenders this season. In some plays he shed the would-be tackler like an overcoat; other times, players simply ricocheted off him.

Then there was the selection of plays in which Roethlisberger absorbed the hit — or even hits — and still managed to make a throw with near-sackers draped from his shoulders or waist. That happened twice in a Sunday night game against Jacksonville earlier this month.

"Big Ben," Antonio Pierce said with a wide smile. "Big Ben, he's tough."

And, naturally, quite sturdy. He stands 6-feet-5 and is listed at 241 pounds. "He's as big as half of our defenders," linebacker Danny Clark noted. And thus, taking him down requires a different tack.

"Most defensive players, when they get a free shot at the quarterback, their eyes get big and they want the kill shot," Spagnuolo said. "I don't know if you can do that with this guy because he is so big."

Whether the Giants can chop down that tree in Sunday's game will have a lot to do with how they attack Roethlisberger. Or perhaps how he tries to attack them.

In recent weeks, teams have found that by using three-step drops and targeting short slant passes, they can neutralize the Giants' pass rush, beat them to the punch. That doesn't seem to be Roethlisberger's mentality. If anything, he has been criticized for holding on to the football for too long. For all the sacks he has avoided by moving, dodging or deflecting defenders, he's been sacked 18 times this year. By comparison, Eli Manning has been sacked only six times.

"He's trying to win on each and every play," Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said. "Sometimes he holds the ball too long, sometimes he makes great plays because he holds the ball too long. We have a great deal of belief in him. You take the good with the bad."

Blitzing seems to be a way to get to Roethlisberger, particularly with a young offensive line in front of him and — before Willie Parker returns — young running backs trying to pick up the pressures. Tomlin said sometimes the coaching staff "groans" as those elements develop. The Eagles, who have a defense that is a close cousin to the Giants', exploited that and put Roethlisberger down eight times. It was the Steelers' only loss.

Assuming that the Giants' defense, which has 21 sacks in six games, can find a way to reach Roethlisberger, they still have the task of making their hits stick.

"First off, Ben can move a little bit too, so you have to have good leverage on him so he can't bounce it outside and get on the move," defensive end Dave Tollefson said. "You have to wrap him up, you can't shoulder him. ... A guy like Ben, you can't tackle up top; you have to go through the hips."

If he does manage to stay upright, they figure the way to stop him from making plays is to keep his gun in the holster, so to speak.

"For us, the key to a quarterback is going after his arms because without their arms, he can't throw the ball, and most likely, he is going to drop the ball," Pierce said.