To securely suppress the acceleration of a rotary drive motor at the time of the tailing off of the plate by a comparatively simple composition, and to improve production efficiency by shortening times other than that required for milling when controlling the speed of the rotary drive motor of rolling mill rolls at the time of the tailing off of the plate in the hot reversible rolling, etc., of the thick plate.

In the rolling mill in which the speeds of the rotary drive motors 4, (4-1, 4-2) of the rolling mill rolls are controlled according to a speed standard value Vs, after detecting the tailing off of a material to be rolled by a load cell 6 installed in the rolling mill, when comparing the actual result value V of the speed of the material at the time of this tailing off with the speed standard value Vs, and when the actual result value V of the speed becomes lower than the speed standard value Vs at the time of a heavy load rolling, etc., the moment said tailing off happened, the actual result value V of the speed is adopted as a speed command instead of the speed standard value Vs. After that, by decelerating and reversing the rotary drive motors 4 by a specific acceleration-deceleration ratio α, and by suppressing an acceleration at the time of the tailing off, a time required from the tailing off to the reversing is shortened.