I know that it has already seemingly been a while by now since the Pittsburgh Steelers played the Tennessee Titans, but I try to maintain a schedule here, and for obvious reasons it wasn’t practical to have charting notes a week ago, just hours after the game ended.
So that means before we move on to Sunday’s game against the Packers, we get to revisit that exciting Titans win, the first time all season the offense was able to crack 30 points, let alone 40 points. Just how good was the showing, exactly?
- Personnel groupings:
- 11: 67/76 (88.2%)
- 12: 3/76 (3.9%)
- 13: 1/76 (1.3%)
- 22: 1/76 (1.3%)
- 32: 1/76 (1.3%)
- V-32: 3/76 (3.9%)
- As should be pretty strikingly obvious, the Steelers overwhelmingly relied upon the 11 personnel package in this game, in spite of the fact that they led from the end of their opening drive straight through to the end.
- Taking out the kneeldowns, they used three-receiver sets on about 92 percent of their offensive snaps, which, from memory, I believe is the highest total that I have seen since I’ve been doing the charting over the course of the past few years. I could be wrong. But frankly, you can’t get much higher, either way.
- As I have previously mentioned, Antonio Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster were used on 100 percent of these 11 personnel snaps, while Martavis Bryant and Eli Rogers were used in a loose rotation by a two-to-one snap ratio between the two.
- Part of the reason they used so many three-receiver sets is because they also used a lot of no huddle, about 40 percent of the time. And as I wrote about yesterday, it was effective, though not game-changing, and clearly affected by the outlier of a 41-yard pass off of a free play.
- On the six offensive plays out of more run-heavy formations, the Steelers averaged 1.3 yards per play. To be fair, one of those plays resulted in a one-yard touchdown pass. This came out of the 32 with no receivers on the field, as I talked about earlier this week—or late last week, I forget which.
- Dick LeBeau’s defense blitzed the Steelers more frequently than any other team this year, on 21 of 54 dropbacks. The Steelers averaged just three yards per play on these, and gave up two sacks, though also scored two touchdowns.
- No-huddle was only used four times. It resulted in one sack—off a blitz—but also produced completions of six and 23 yards, and a 15-yard roughing the passer penalty.
- Average depth of target: 9.5 (51 targets; 45 official)
- Antonio Brown – 14.4 (13 targets)
- Jesse James – 6.9 (8 targets)
- Le’Veon Bell – .1 (13 targets; 11 official)
- JuJu Smith–Schuster – 13.3 (10 targets; 8 official)
- Martavis Bryant – 17.8 (6 targets; 4 official)
