We are operating under a short week these days just as are the Pittsburgh Steelers, meaning that all of our work has to be accelerated in order to fit into the window between the end of Sunday’s game and tomorrow night’s kickoff. That is good news for you if you happen to live for the weekly charting notes column, which I’m pretty sure you don’t. But here it is all the same.
- Personnel groupings:
- 11: 48/67 (71.6%)
- 12: 10/67 (14.9%)
- 21: 1/67 (1.5%)
- 22: 8/67 (11.9%)
- As you can see, the Steelers did not get particularly ambitious this week in shaking up their personnel packages, sticking with just four—really, three, considering that the use of the 21 package was limited to one snap.
- It should not be surprising that the 11 personnel grouping dominated this one, considering that the Steelers spent the vast majority of the game trailing, often by seven points or more. It’s pretty fundamental reasoning that when you have a significant deficit to overcome you are going to spend more time throwing the ball, which lends itself to more wide receivers on the field.
- The 22 personnel grouping was not very effective at all in this game. Not only did it go 0/1 passing with a sack, on five carries, they averaged two yards per rush, only one of which was a successful play, converting on second and two for three yards.
- They did find success running out of the 12 personnel, in spite of a botched jet sweep that lost nine yards. Even including that, they ran the ball seven times for 30 yards, averaging 4.3 yards per rush. If you take out Martavis Bryant’s carry and focus on traditional running plays, they gained 39 yards on six attempts, or 6.5 yards per carry.
- It should be pretty clear by now that JuJu Smith-Schuster is the number two receiver. He played 54 snaps to Bryant’s 38, but it’s notable that Eli Rogers himself managed to play 18 snaps. interestingly, all of Rogers’ snaps came with Smith-Schuster on the field, none with Bryant.
- I have talked about this before, but for a tall quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger is allowing too many hands on his passes. He had another two passes batted down at the line of scrimmage in this game.
- Play action was not used often—a shocker, I know. Roethlisberger incorporated it on just four passing plays. He was sacked once, and forced to throw the ball away on another. A third went for two yards on seven and seven. But the other was the touchdown to Smith-Schuster.
- The Colts did not fare particularly well when they blitzed. Doing so on eight occasions, they allowed 7.3 yards per play, but that includes an offensive pass interference penalty. Removing that, the Steelers averaged nearly 10 yards per play, which included the sack for a loss of eight. That also includes three passing plays of 10 yards or more, the 44-yarder among them.
- Average depth of target – 8.3 (34 targets; 31 official)
- Vance McDonald – 4.5 (2 targets)
- Antonio Brown – 15.1 (9 targets; 7 official)
- Jesse James – 7.5 (2 targets)
- Le’Veon Bell – -.5 (6 targets)
- JuJu Smith-Schuster – 10.6 (8 targets; 7 official)
- Eli Rogers – -5 (1 target)
- Martavis Bryant – 9.4 (5 targets)
