Your midseason Pittsburgh Steelers’ defensive charting notes from the first nine games.
As our guide, we have 589 total plays we’re looking at. They’re on pace for about 1047, a slight dip from 2015 but not by much.
– The top personnel packages this season.
Nickel: 61.1%
3-4: 29%
Dime: 8.8%
These are fairly similar to where things stacked up last year.
After playing a ton of dime in the first two weeks, they’ve had only 13 snaps of it since then. And none in the last two weeks.
– For whatever it’s worth, and we don’t have a figure to compare this to, offenses are just 23/40 on 3rd and 3 or closer.
– Last year, the Steelers stayed in their base 3-4 only 14 times against 11 personnel. This season, with obviously a lot fewer plays, they’ve already down it 22 times. It’s up about 3.7% from 2015.
– Because I know this is one of the biggest stats we pull from this, the Steelers have sent 5+ rushers on 23% of their opportunities.
Over the past two games however, that number is way way up. 52.6% of the time.
– Same with overall blitzes.
The seasonal number has spiked back up to 34.5% to the point that is surpasses last year’s Keith Butler total of 33.3%.
This is again in large part due to the last two weeks where his blitz rate is up to 57.9%.
He’s sent a four man blitz 23.6% of the time this year.
– Pressure stats:
James Harrison: 12
Stephon Tuitt: 12
Arthur Moats: 8
Jarvis Jones: 7
Cam Heyward: 6.5
Ryan Shazier: 6.5
Anthony Chickillo: 5
Ricardo Mathews: 3
Javon Hargrave: 2
Daniel McCullers: 2
A look at each position group.
Defensive Line
– As we told you earlier in the week, Stephon Tuitt has played 178 consecutive snaps. I believe the only other ones to do that over this span are Alejandro Villanueva, Ramon Foster, and Mike Mitchell.
Tuitt hasn’t had more than three consecutive snaps off since Week 5 against the New York Jets.
– Javon Hargrave has played 70.7% of the 3-4 nose tackle snaps this year. Daniel McCullers is at 28.7%.
– Though I understand the numbers lack context, when Hargrave is on the field in their 3-4, teams are averaging 4.4 yards per carry. With McCullers, that number drops to 2.7.
– Since Week 7, Ricardo Mathews’ snap percentage has dropped to 17.3%. The first six weeks, he was at 24.4%.
Linebacker
– Good news! Ryan Shazier has played the 100% of the snaps the last two games.
– OLB snap count comparisons.
Jarvis Jones: 57.6%
James Harrison: 48.7%
Arthur Moats: 54.2%
Anthony Chickillo: 37.6%
Coverage numbers for each:
James Harrison: 27.3%
Jarvis Jones: 23.3%
Anthony Chickillo: 22.3%
Arthur Moats: 21.8%
Snaps per pressure for each. Lower the number, the better.
James Harrison: 11.8
Arthur Moats: 19.8
Anthony Chickillo: 21.6
Jarvis Jones: 24
And that is why we know Harrison is still their best pass rusher.
Secondary
– Mike Mitchell leads the Steelers with 15 blitzes. He has two pressures on those.
– Robert Golden has been a strong safety in the box 33.6%% of the time this season. Compare that to Sean Davis, who is at 20.4%.
– Target numbers:
William Gay: 5/7 101 yards 1 TD 0 INT
Mike Mitchell: 2/8 29 yards 0 TD 0 INT
Artie Burns: 5/16 158 yards 1 TD 1 INT
Sean Davis: 2/2 35 yards 0 TD 0 INT
Ross Cockrell: 8/17 84 yards 1 TD 0 INT
– Burns leads the secondary with four penalties.
