It’s that time of the week again, where we have some fun (and it is fun, I don’t care what you say) with numbers, looking at the Pittsburgh Steelers’ previous game through the prism of our offensive charting notes, organic, vegan, hand-crafted, and allergy-free (unscented). We also sell pickles and pickle-brining starter packs.
- Personnel groupings:
- 11: 59/90 (65.5%)
- 12: 21/90 (23.3%)
- 22: 7/90 (7.8%)
- 23: 3/90 (3.3%)
- The 11 personnel package may have been—as almost always—the dominant look once again, but as I talked about yesterday, things could have been, and were early on, very different. The Steelers primarily ran out of heavier personnel during their first two drives, on which they scored touchdowns.
- The dominance of the 11 personnel package only really began in the second half once the Ravens took the lead. They used it last in the first half, as pretty much all teams do with the clock winding down, but they went back to using the 12 as a base in the third quarter.
- Of course, there were two primary factors in this. For one thing, Vance McDonald returned from injury after missing three games. The drop in usage of 12 and 22 personnel also declined when he exited the game. The other is obviously JuJu Smith-Schuster being suspended.
- I’m really not sure why, but for whatever reason the Steelers found 15 snaps for Justin Hunter, on which he did nothing, except he did have one cut block. Martavis Bryant played over 70 snaps.
- I have a sneaking suspicion that people will want to know the nu-huddle numbers from the game. Based on the official play-by-play, they ran out of the no huddle on 37 plays. Taking out two spikes and one pass interference, they gained 258 yards on 34 plays, averaging 7.6 yards per play, scoring two touchdowns.
- The Ravens sent a higher percentage of blitzes against the Steelers than the vast majority of teams have this year. Off the top of my head, I believe only the Packers really came close. On 71 dropbacks, Baltimore blitzed 27 times, or roughly 38 percent of the time.
- I wouldn’t necessarily say it worked out too well for them. While they limited the offense to 5.25 yards per play, they also gave up two touchdowns, though they got two sacks and a batted pass out of it. Ben Roethlisberger completed 16 of 26 pass attempts for 161 yards, averaging only 6.2 yards per pass attempt.
- The play-action pass was an even more inconsequential tool than it normally is. Used on just three of 71 dropbacks (4.2%), but it did yield a touchdown.
- Average depth of target: 8 (66 targets; 64 official excluding spikes)
- Vance McDonald – 5.7 (6 targets)
- Xavier Grimble – 6.3 (3 targets)
- Antonio Brown – 13.3 (18 targets; 17 official)
- Jesse James – 5.6 (12 targets)
- Roosevelt Nix – 1 (1 target)
- Le’Veon Bell – 2.4 (10 targets)
- Eli Rogers – 6.4 (5 targets)
- Martavis Bryant – 9.9 (11 targets; 10 official)
