Steelers Regular Season Offensive Personnel Breakdown

Now that the season is over for the Pittsburgh Steelers, we still find ourselves in reflect and evaluate mode. One of the things that I was interested in reviewing when all was said and done was just how the team used their variety of personnel packages on the offensive side of the ball over the course of the regular season.

Using our charting throughout the year, I took the time to break down and compile all of the team’s offensive snaps during the season, including penalties, split up between personnel packages, ranging from 01 or 10 and up through the victory formation.

Among the most immediate, and most obvious, observations to take away from the chart is just how starkly the Steelers have become a passing team, with their base package now featuring three wide receivers. On 714 of their total 1097 snaps during the year, Pittsburgh broke out their 11 personnel package, or 65 percent of the time.

No other individual package comes even remotely close to the Steelers’ use of the 11 personnel, with one running back and one tight end. Between the 02 and 20 personnel looks, which also feature three wide receivers, the team added five more snaps.

Very rarely, however, did the Steelers ever run without both a tight end and a running back—at least one of each—on the field. From the 01, 02, 03, 10, and 20 personnel packages combined, the team accumulated a total of just 23 snaps over the course of the year.

Two-back sets also were not overly popular, totaling just 145 snaps on the season within the various possible incarnations, but the Steelers ran multiple-tight end sets on 205 plays. On only 23 snaps did they run out of a personnel package that lacked either a tight end or a running back.

The second-most prominent package overall by a fair margin was the 12, which features two tight ends, and that only accounted for 141 snaps, or 12.85 percent of the total—a far cry from the 65 percent of the 11 package. Meanwhile, the 22 look—a run-heavy look—got the third-most blow with 85 snaps, or close to eight percent of the total.