It was evident Sunday against the Cleveland Browns that the Pittsburgh Steelers game plan on offense was to pound the run early and often as evidence by the team running 13 times in their first 15 plays.
While the run did have some success early on in the game, the offense failed to sprinkle in some well needed play action passes to help support it.
In the first half against the Browns Sunday, I have the Steelers only using play action twice during the 17 pass attempts by quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
The first play action pass in the second half came with 10:07 left in the third quarter and the offense finished the game with 10 play action passes in total with three of those coming during the final scoring drive.
Moving forward, the Steelers offense is going to have to start using play action early and often in games order to do to help provide more spacing for the receivers down the field. Roethlisberger has shown in the past that he is very effective when throwing deep off of a play action and there’s no reason for them to not use it more.
