If you are curious as to what percentage of plays that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger generally calls on weekly basis, offensive coordinator Todd Haley revealed that number Thursday during his weekly talk with the media.
“We are somewhere in the 27-28 percent range,” said Haley. “Again, it changes game by game. There are different percentages for different weeks, and then situational football factors in.”
Haley was then asked to clarify if that was the percentage that Roethlisberger calls or if that was his own percentage of calls made. He again said that was Roethlisberger’s percentage.
“Yeah. Don’t hold me to it. But we try to practice that percentage so that we are practicing what we need to get practiced,” he said. “But at this point, no-huddle, we have a lot in the bank on it and I feel pretty good about it where most of the guys that have been playing are with it. And I feel quite good about when we are in that mode of operation.”
Haley also clarified that a large percentage of the calls that Roethlisberger makes is when the offense is in no-huddle mode.
“Yeah. And there are audible alerts. We call them alerts. But there are run-pass, pass-pass and pass-to-run, those kinds of things.”
As I posted earlier Thursday, the Steelers offense has run just over 30% of their plays this season after not huddling. Not all of those are hurry-up instances, of course, but the number does come close to the 27-28 percent number that Haley threw out there Thursday.
If you watch the television broadcast of games on a weekly basis, you have obviously heard Roethlisberger making his alert calls that Haley referenced. We don’t chart those, but might start doing so in the future.
The Steelers next three games are at home, so there’s a good chance we will see plenty of no-huddle early on in these games.
Personally, I’m surprised that Haley attached a number to it today.
