The Pittsburgh Steelers are coming off another successful game against the Cincinnati Bengals, entering their bye week with a winning record, and they even have a realistic shot of coming out of it in first place should the Bengals and Baltimore Ravens lose.
In their offensive approach during their back-to-back victories, the team has actually moved away from emphasizing the three-receiver set, relying on heavier packages while still remaining versatile out of them.
- Personnel groupings:
- 01: 1/74 (1.4%)
- 11: 28/74 (37.8%)
- 12: 18/74 (24.3%)
- 13: 8/74 (10.8%)
- 22: 13/74 (17.6%)
- 23: 5/74 (6.8%)
- V-32: 1/74 (1.4%)
- If you follow this article on a weekly basis, you probably noticed that there is much more versatility in their personnel package usage here than there ordinarily is. The 11 package barely even received the most snaps, or at least compared to the usual disbursement. To see it even under 50 percent is rare enough.
- The extent to which the team used multiple tight ends is obviously the story here. Only 29 of 74 snaps featured fewer than one tight end on the field at a time, and for 13 snaps, all three were on board. About 61 percent of the Steelers’ offensive snaps featured multiple tight ends.
- Even Xavier Grimble got an extensive amount of work, to the tune of 21 snaps. He barely even played that much when Vance McDonald was out in the season opener.
- Oh, and the Steelers also averaged 5.1 yards per play when they had two or more tight ends on the field, a figure that includes a pair of one-yard touchdowns to bias the results. If you factor in no-plays, they actually averaged 5.8 yards per play.
- Not to say that they weren’t effective with three receivers on the field, because they averaged 9.4 yards per play under those circumstances.
- As the weeks have gone by, the 01 package has faded out. It has only been used three times over the past two games. It may be gone for good after the bye week if the team should add another running back by then.
- Ben Roethlisberger used play action on seven of 51 dropbacks on Sunday, or 13.7 percent of the time, which is a lot for the Steelers. They averaged minus-one yard on those seven plays. He completed two of those passes—one of which was fumbled, the other of which was batted up and he caught himself. Yowch.
- He was, however, exceptionally effective against the blitz, which he faced on 11 dropbacks. He completed nine passes against the blitz, one incompletion being another batted ball, and that did come on third down. The Vance McDonald fumble play also came on third down. But they averaged 15 yards per play against the blitz, including the game-winning touchdown when the Bengals rushed seven.
- Average depth of target: 9.36 (49 targets; 46 official)
- Vance McDonald: 2.5 (8 targets)
- Xavier Grimble: 8.5 (2 targets)
- Antonio Brown: 13.3 (7 targets; 6 official)
- Jesse James: 4.5 (8 targets; 6 official)
- Roosevelt Nix: 12 (1 target)
- James Conner: -1.1 (7 targets)
- JuJu Smith–Schuster: 17 (11 targets; 10 official)
- James Washington: 47 (1 target)
- Justin Hunter: 29 (1 target)
- Ryan Switzer: 7 (1 target)
- Ben Roethlisberger: 0 (1 ‘target’)
- Nobody: 28 (1 ‘target’)
