The 2004 NFL Draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held April 24–25, 2004 at the theater at Madison Square Garden. No teams elected to claim any players in the supplemental draft that year.

The draft was shown on ESPN both days and eventually moved to ESPN2 both days. The draft began with the San Diego Chargers selecting Eli Manning who was later traded to the New York Giants in the Manning-Rivers trade. There were 32 compensatory selections distributed among 16 teams, with the Eagles, Rams, and Jets each receiving 4 compensatory picks. The draft set several records, including the most wide receivers selected in the first round, with seven. Another record set by the draft was the most trades in the first round, with twenty-eight trades. The University of Miami set an NFL record for the most first rounders drafted with 6. Ohio State set an NFL draft record having 14 total players selected through all rounds. As of 2012, this draft also has two other records attached to it: it became the draft with the shortest time between having multiple quarterbacks being drafted and starting for Super Bowl winners (Ben Roethlisberger for the 2005 Steelers, and Manning for the 2007 Giants) and it has become the first draft ever to have produced two QBs who each won multiple Super Bowls (with Roethlisberger winning his second in 2008 and Eli his second in 2011). The 255 players chosen in the draft were composed of:

The National Football League Draft is an annual event in which the National Football League (NFL) teams select eligible college football players and it is their most common source of player recruitment. The basic design of the draft is that each team is given a position in the drafting order in reverse order relative its record in the previous year—the last place gets positioned first. With this position, the team can either select a player or trade their position to another team for other positions, a player, or players, or any combination thereof. After each team had utilized its position in the drafting order, whether by trading it or selecting a player, a round would be complete. Certain aspects of the draft, including team positioning and the number of rounds in the draft, have seen revisions since its first creation in 1936, but the fundamental methodology has remained the same. The original rationale in creating the draft was to increase the competitive parity between the teams as the worst team would, idealistically, have chosen the best player available.

Benjamin Todd "Ben" Roethlisberger (pronounced /ˈrɒθlɨsbɜrɡər/; born March 2, 1982), nicknamed Big Ben, is an American football quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League. He was drafted by the Steelers in the first round (11th overall) in the 2004 NFL Draft. He played college football at Miami University.

Roethlisberger earned the AP NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year Award in 2004 and his first Pro Bowl selection in 2007. He became the youngest Super Bowl-winning quarterback in NFL history, helping lead the Steelers, in his second professional season, to a 21–10 victory over the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL at the age of 23. Roethlisberger led the Steelers to a second Super Bowl title in four seasons as they defeated the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII, 27–23, after completing a game-winning touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes in the final 35 seconds.

Roethlisberger has been one of the most efficient passers in NFL history. He currently ranks 10th all-time in NFL passer rating (92.9), 5th in yards per attempt (8.06), and 11th in completion percentage (63.24%) among quarterbacks with a minimum of 1,500 career attempts. He has the fourth highest career winning percentage (.710) as a starter in the regular season among quarterbacks with a minimum of 100 starts.