Ben took three kneels.
I know. How much time did each kneel eat up? Was the espn.com thing just not updating? All I saw was, “4th-and-16, B. Roethlisgberger kneels 1:00”, and the next thing it said was replacing the 1:00 with “Final.” Was the first kneel at 1:00, and then each one ate 20+ seconds?
I know that this is very old news at this point, but I’m just perplexed by your interpretation of this play. You must have been very confused as to why the Steelers rushed to the line without huddling up if you thought that they were trying to discuss 4th down strategy. Ben’s expression of frustration and dismissive hand gesture at the refs stopping the clock must have also been quite confusing to you.
It’s actually quite common for teams to rush up to the line to try to get a play off before the defense can get set. Sometimes they do that just to fake a play and get the defense to jump. However, unless the clock is running down at the end of the game and the team is trying to come from behind, it’s not really to the offense’s advantage to have the ref stop the clock.