Breaking Down The Steelers 2011 Wide Receiver Bubble Screens

One of the biggest gripes you will hear from Steeler Nation concerning the play calling of Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator Bruce Arians is his use of the wide receiver bubble screen. Everyone screams bloody murder when one goes for negative or minimal yardage and to hear the fan base talk, Arians uses it 10 times a game and 10 times too much.

The bubble screen is predominantly used as a run game alternative and is effective in getting the ball in the hands of your best play makers using a high percentage throw. The use of it can help in keeping defenses honest in regards to over-committing to the run and potentially setting up the defense for future one-on-one matchups outside should they choose to press the outside receivers.

This post is not so much looking at what the bubble screen is or isn\’t used for in setting up other plays or defensive alignments as much as it is looking at the results the Steelers had using it. Only Arians truly knows how it fits into the game plan and how it sets defenses up for future play calls. I will leave that for now to all of the so-called offensive coordinators who read this post.

I went back through all of our game charting and re-watched all of the true wide receiver bubble screens called in 2011 and came up with 45 non-penalty plays that it was used on. I should note that I did not include the interception at the end of the first half against the Tennessee Titans in week 5 as I am not sure if anyone knew what that play call was and that includes Arians and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. We will just call that play, DOH!

Looking at the numbers below you will see that 45 breaks down to 2.65 a game, a far cry from the 5 or even 10 times a game that fans claim that Arians or Roethlisberger calls it during a game. According to my charting there were 4 games that it wasn\’t used at all in, so even removing those games from the average it was used 3.46 times a game. 25 times the play produced 4 or more yards and 33 of the 45 times it produced positive yardage. 20 times it produced a first down and the yards per attempt average was a respectable 6.09. There was the 1 interception against the Baltimore Ravens on a nice play by Terrell Suggs and 4 fell incomplete. 1 of the 45 went for a touchdown by Mike Wallace against the Cincinnati Bengals.

When you look at the 2011 bubble screens by target you see that Hines Ward was targeted 11 times for a 4.55 yards per target. How many of these were game planned in to get him some “easy catches” during his march to 1,000 we will never know, but you have to think quite a few were. Those catches accounted for nearly 25% of the balls he caught this past season. Wallace was targeted on 17 of the bubble screens for a very healthy 8.35 yards per attempt. Maybe they didn\’t throw it to him enough based on those stats. Outside of the 2 incompletions and the interception, Wallace was only held to less than 5 yards on the bubble screen twice and none of the completions went for negative yards.

What about the usage by downs? To hear many talk the Steelers used it multiple times on 3rd down when it fact it was used just once, and that was in the Wild Card game against the Denver Broncos. 18 times it was used on 1st down and 26 times on 2nd down.

So now you have the facts as far as the wide receiver bubble screens went in 2011 for the Steelers and as you can see it dispels many of the myths and false accusations surrounding it.

Let me know if you think I have missed any and I will go back and look at the play in question.