The Pittsburgh Steelers played their biggest game of the season on Sunday, emerging victorious with three touchdowns drives in the fourth quarter over the Baltimore Ravens, including one that ended with just nine seconds to play, which secured a four-point lead. Here is how the offense got the job done from a schematics standpoint.
- Personnel formations
- 11: 40/59 (67.8%)
- 12: 4/59 (6.8%)
- 13: 4/59 (6.8%)
- 21: 3/59 (5.2%)
- 22: 7/59 (11.7%)
- V-32: 1/59 (1.7%)
- As you might expect, the Steelers featured a lot more run-heavy personnel in the first half while the game was tied or they had a lead. In the fourth quarter, after falling 20-10, they nearly exclusively used the 11 personnel, and they didn’t have many snaps in total, so you can see why the 11 was so dominant overall.
- In fact, in the first half, in 13 of 26 snaps, the Steelers used either multiple tight ends or a fullback, it not both. They ran with less than three receivers on the field for just five snaps in the second half on 32 total snaps. That is an awfully large discrepancy. And four of those snaps came on the first 10 snaps of the second half.
- Extra lineman Chris Hubbard played on seven of the Steelers’ first 19 snaps. He saw just three snaps the rest of the way. Likewise, seven of Roosevelt Nix’s 10 meaningful plays also came in the first half.
- The same thing could be said of Xavier Grimble. He saw 10 snaps in the first half, including penalties, but he did not see the field in the second half. Jesse James played all but the first snap of the second half after playing only about half of the snaps in the first half.
- It seems pretty clear to me that Eli Rogers is the team’s number two receiver. He was on the field for every 11 formation snap, and even got some snaps as the lone wide receiver, with Antonio Brown getting an occasional breather. He was the only receiver on the field on his end-around.
- Of Demarcus Ayers’ 16 snaps, on only one of them did he line up in the slot. On all other snaps, he was either on the outside or the only wide receiver on that side of the field.
- Veteran DeAngelo Williams got one snap…on the victory formation snap to close out the first half.
- The Steelers actually made use of the no-huddle occasionally, on 12 plays.
- Play-action was unsuccessful, yielding a one-for-five ratio for eight yards and an interception.
- However, they did handle the blitz well. They completed seven of nine passes for 121 yards. Brown also was called for offensive pass interference on a 10th
- Average depth of target – 8.5
- Antonio Brown – 7.7 (12 targets)
- Eli Rogers – 9.2 (6 targets)
- Demarcus Ayers – 23.5 (2 targets)
- Cobi Hamilton – 3 (1 target)
- Le’Veon Bell – 4 (4 targets)
- Jesse James – 9.6 (5 targets)
- Xavier Grimble – 13.5 (2 targets)
- David Johnson – 9 (1 target)
