The Pittsburgh Steelers offensive rushing attack hasn’t been great at all in the team’s first three regular season games of 2017 and you don’t need many, if any, stats to confirm that. With that said, I wanted to show you a few things that stick out when you break the rushing stats down by personnel groupings.
In the first table below are the 60 non-quarterback rushing attempts the Steelers offense has had through three games broken down by personnel groupings used. Not surprisingly, most of those 60 rushes have come via the 11 personnel grouping that includes one running back, one tight end and three wide receivers. The Steelers running backs, mainly Le’Veon Bell, have had their most successful run rates (42.5%) out of this grouping. Even so, those 40 rushes have only resulted in a 3.85 yards per carry average.
In case you forgot, the one 9 yard carry via the one 13 personnel grouping, came against the Minnesota Vikings and was by rookie running back James Conner.
In summation and outside of that one run by Conner, the Steelers have been extremely awful so far this season when running the football with more than one tight end on the field. They’ve used two or more tight ends on 33.3% of all non-quarterback rushes.
| RUSHING STATS BY PERSONELL GROUPING | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PERS | RUSH | YARDS | YPC | SUCC | SUCC % |
| 11 | 40 | 154 | 3.85 | 17 | 42.5% |
| 12 | 7 | 15 | 2.14 | 2 | 28.6% |
| 13 | 1 | 9 | 9 | 1 | 100.0% |
| 21 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0.0% |
| 22 | 10 | 29 | 2.9 | 2 | 20.0% |
| TOTAL | 60 | 211 | 3.52 | 22 | 36.7% |
In the next table I have the rushes broken down by not only personnel groupings used, but rush directions as well.
As you should be able to tell, Steelers running backs, again, mainly Bell, have run between the guards on 33 of 40 total rushes when in 11 personnel. As far as successful play rates go when running out of 11 personnel, they haven’t been bad as a whole as only the runs to left guard, 11 in total, and right tackle, 2 in total and right end, 1 in total, are below the desired 45% success rate.
| RUSHING STATS BY PERSONELL GROUPING & DIRECTION | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Pers | LE | LT | LG | M | RG | RT | RE | TOTAL |
| RUSH | 2 | 2 | 11 | 7 | 15 | 2 | 1 | 40 |
| YARDS | 8 | 7 | 39 | 29 | 65 | 5 | 1 | 154 |
| YPC | 4 | 3.5 | 3.55 | 4.14 | 4.33 | 2.5 | 1 | 3.85 |
| SUCC | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 17 |
| SUCC % | 50.0% | 50.0% | 36.4% | 57.1% | 46.7% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 42.5% |
| 12 Pers | LE | LT | LG | M | RG | RT | RE | TOTAL |
| RUSH | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 7 |
| YARDS | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 15 |
| YPC | N/A | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2.67 | 0 | N/A | 2.14 |
| SUCC | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| SUCC % | N/A | 0.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% | 0.00% | N/A | 28.6% |
| 13 Pers | LE | LT | LG | M | RG | RT | RE | TOTAL |
| RUSH | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| YARDS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| YPC | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | 9 | N/A | 0 |
| SUCC | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| SUCC % | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | 100.0% | N/A | 100.0% |
| 21 Pers | LE | LT | LG | M | RG | RT | RE | TOTAL |
| RUSH | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| YARDS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| YPC | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | 2 | N/A | N/A | 2 |
| SUCC | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| SUCC % | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | 0.0% | N/A | N/A | 0.0% |
| 22 Pers | LE | LT | LG | M | RG | RT | RE | TOTAL |
| RUSH | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 10 |
| YARDS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 19 | 0 | 29 |
| YPC | N/A | N/A | N/A | 2 | 1.33 | 4.75 | N/A | 2.9 |
| SUCC | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| SUCC % | N/A | N/A | N/A | 0.0% | 33.3% | 25.0% | N/A | 20.0% |
After the team’s next three games I’ll give you an update on these numbers and hopefully I’ll have some good news to pass along at that time.
