I forgot to get to this yesterday, so it’s a bit late, but just before we get to kickoff today against the Dolphins, I wanted to provide you with the Pittsburgh Steelers’ overall season outlook on the offensive side of the ball—when it comes to charting tendencies, that is.
- Personnel formations:
- 01: 9/1107 (.81%)
- 11: 674/1107 (60.89%)
- 12: 158/1107 (14.27%)
- 13: 103/1107 (9.3%)
- 14: 1/1107 (.09%)
- 20: 3/1107 (.27%)
- 21: 54/1107 (4.88%)
- 22: 84/1107 (7.59%)
- 23: 3/1107 (.27%)
- 31: 1/1107 (.09%)
- 12WC: 1/1107 (.09%)
- 10 Men: 1/1107 (.09%)
- Victory: 15/1107 (1.36%)
- As you likely have gathered, the Steelers managed to use a wide variety of formations, with a few obvious trends, and a few outliers. They used three wide receivers a little more than 60 percent of the time, for example, while they featured multiple tight ends on about 32 percent of their plays.
- It is a bit interesting to see how the 11 personnel package far outpaces the rest in terms of the most-frequently used, but that is partly because the Steeler were versatile outside of that look, sometimes using two tight ends, sometimes three (often with a tackle-eligible), or with two tight ends and a fullback.
- See how infrequently the Steelers used the four-receiver package? Just 10 snaps all season, less than one percent of their total snaps. They also had no receivers on the field for four snaps. Even went without a quarterback on one snap.
- From the time that Le’Veon Bell debuted this season to the start of the regular-season finale, in which he did not play, running backs not named Le’Veon Bell logged just 56 snaps over the course of the entire 12-game span. And 28 of those snaps came with Bell also on the field. And no, that doesn’t include Roosevelt Nix.
- Bell played 801 snaps in our charting. On 123 of those snaps, he lined up as a wide receiver.
- Including plays negated by penalty, the Steelers ran 662 designed passing plays. Designed runs accounted for 405 plays. They had 21 pre-snap penalties called against them that resulted in no play being run.
- Left tackle Alejandro Villanueva was the only player on offense to play every snap. David DeCastro only missed one snap, for which he had to be taken off to be checked for a concussion. Among the skill position players, Antonio Brown led the group with 995 snaps. He missed just 112 snaps, 73 of which came in the finale in which he did not play.
- On the season, the Steelers ran the no-huddle on 178 snaps, or about 16 percent of the time.
- Play-action was an infrequent employ, used on just 81 of 662 possible occasions. They gained a net average of 8.3 yards per play, but threw four interceptions to three touchdowns using it.
- The Steelers were blitzed frequently, on 153 of 662 possible opportunities, over 23 percent of the time. They averaged 6.9 net yards per play against the blitz, throwing six touchdowns to six interceptions.
- Average depth of target – 9.5
- Antonio Brown – 11.4 (170 targets)
- Eli Rogers – 9.4 (69 targets)
- Cobi Hamilton – 15.8 (30 targets)
- Sammie Coates – 21.9 (51 targets)
- Darrius Heyward-Bey – 20.8 (21 targets)
- Demarcus Ayers – 13.8 (16 targets)
- Markus Wheaton – 15.5 (10 targets)
- Ladarius Green – 12.5 (35 targets)
- Xavier Grimble – 6.5 (22 targets)
- David Johnson – 5.7 (13 targets)
- Jesse James – 6.7 (64 targets)
- Le’Veon Bell – 0 (97 targets)
- DeAngelo Williams – -.7 (27 targets)
- Fitzgerald Toussaint – -1.5 (4 targets)
- Roosevelt Nix – -1 (2 targets)
