Jets Didn’t Go After Steelers’ Roethlisberger On Sunday

The Pittsburgh Steelers easily took care of the New York Jets this past Sunday as quarterback Ben Roethlisberger threw for 380 yards and 4 touchdowns during the game. On Tuesday, Roethlisberger talked about how well his offensive line played against the Jets in addition to discussing the plan of attack going into the contest.

“It started with the pass blocking,” Roethlisberger said during his weekly appearance on 93.7 The Fan. “We went into the game with the mindset that we were going to get the ball out quick so we did have a game plan for it. Screens, ball out quick, things like that and as the game went on, and as the boys were doing a better and better job blocking, and when I say better and better I mean more time, we were able to take the big drops, some play action, some seven steps, then you just start calling your game and they just kept blocking. And there were some times that I even held the ball a little too long for some route things to develop and they just kept that great defensive line of the Jets have away and that was awesome.”

Awesome it was indeed and as a matter of fact, Roethlisberger was only sacked once during Sunday’s game.

Now that I have gone through the tape of the game a few times I can pass along some key stats to you related to Roethlisberger’s performance against the Jets.

For starters, let’s look at his snap to throw and snap to sack times from the game. While Roethlisberger had an average snap to something time of 2.44-seconds against the Jets, his first half average was 2.36-seconds. In other words, like he said, he got the ball out quick early compared to the second half when he averaged 2.53-seconds until pass or sack.

As you can see in the chart below, the Jets barely blitzed Roethlisberger on Sunday as they chose to only send four pass rushers for most of the game. When they did start blitzing him late in the first half, he completed 3 of those 4 passing attempts for 28 yards.

Including all penalty plays, I have the Jets sending more than 4 pass rushers just 8 times on 52 total dropbacks.

As far as passing distances go, 39 of the 51 times that Roethlisberger threw the football against the Jets it never traveled more than 9 yards in the air past the line of scrimmage. While he was 3 of 7 passing on throws that traveled more than 15 yards past the line of scrimmage, 3 of those incompletions can easily be pinned on wide receiver Sammie Coates.

It was a solid game by Roethlisberger and could have been even better had a few of his throws been held on to. While several might try to classify this game as an example of a dink and dunk offense, don’t forgot the seven times he threw deep in the game.