By JOE MANDAK

The Associated Press

PITTSBURGH – Steelers star Ben Roethlisberger, the youngest quarterback to lead a team to the Super Bowl championship, broke his jaw and nose in a motorcycle crash Monday in which he was not wearing a helmet.

Roethlisberger was in serious but stable condition, Dr. Larry Jones, chief of trauma at Mercy Hospital said before surgery.

“He was talking to me before he left for the operating room,” Jones said. “He’s coherent. He’s making sense. He knows what happened. He knows where he is. From that standpoint, he’s very stable.”

The 24-year-old Roethlisberger was without a helmet, police said. Roethlisberger was on his black 2005 Suzuki Hayabusa heading toward an intersection on the edge of downtown. A Chrysler New Yorker traveling in the opposite direction took a left turn and collided with the motorcycle, and Roethlisberger was thrown, police said.

“He wasn’t moving and I was afraid that he had died. … He wasn’t really speaking. He seemed dazed but he was resisting the effort to make him stay down,” said witness Sandra Ford, who was waiting at a near by bus stop.

The NFL’s standard player contract prohibits any activity involving “significant risk of personal injury” apart from football. But many prominent athletes ride motorcycles anyway, despite the risk and the possibility of losing salary.

In May 2005, Cowher warned Roethlisberger about safe riding after Cleveland tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. was injured in a motorcycle accident. Winslow tore knee ligaments and was lost for the season.

“He talked about being a risk-taker and I’m not really a risk-taker. I’m pretty conservative and laid back, but the big thing is to just be careful,” Roethlisberger said at the time. “I’ll just continue to be careful. I told him we don’t ever ride alone, we always ride in a group of people, and I think it makes it even more safe.”