A few weeks ago, we slogged through our defensive charting and came up with a ton of cool factoids about the Pittsburgh Steelers. We’ll do similar today but use a league-wide approach and compare snap count totals to the Steelers in relation to the 31 other teams. Of course, we don’t chart the other teams, but the final people at Football Outsiders do and have a handy table to sort through it. Click here to play around with the numbers. Lots of fun.
– Heath Miller played the 4th highest percentage of snaps for any tight end, 86%. Only Jason Witten, Greg Olsen, and Travis Kelce saw the field more often.
– Antonio Brown played the 5th most overall and 2nd highest percentage of WR snaps. Only DeAndre Hopkins played a higher percent, his 96.9% to Brown’s 95.7%.
Of the top 15 receivers in offensive snaps, Brown was the only one to see at least 20 snaps on special teams, obviously serving as the team’s punt returner. No other receiver had more than 14. You’d have to look down to the 23rd receiver on the list, Jarvis Landry, to find someone who played more than Brown.
– The Steelers were one of just nine teams to have at least two offensive lineman play 100% of their offense’s snaps. Ramon Foster and David DeCastro, two stabilizing forces on an otherwise injury-riddled line. The Cleveland Browns led the league with three lineman playing 100% of the time.
– Cam Heyward played the fifth highest percentage along the defensive line, 88%. He’s now finished in the top seven the last two years.
– And despite missing two games, Stephon Tuitt finished in 17th place with 78.6% of the Steelers’ defensive snaps. Tuitt missed 148 snaps during his injury. If we assume that he would’ve played 85% of those, he would have an extra 125 snaps for a total of 997. Or, the third most total snaps and third highest percentage (91.2%) in the NFL.
– Despite being the last defensive player to miss a snap, Lawrence Timmons finished in 13th place for linebackers. This is, of course, because the Steelers started to use their dime package the last quarter of the year, taking him off the field. He still played over 95% of the time.
– Due to injuries and rotation, no other Steelers’ linebacker played more than 60.1% of the time. That hasn’t happened previously dating back to 2012, when FO began tracking these snap totals.
– Doran Grant was one of three defensive backs to play just one defensive snap.
