The Pittsburgh Steelers had their hands full with the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday, requiring a three-touchdown surge in the final 17 minutes of the game—which accounted for their only points—to come out of the day with a victory. And even that came down to the final seconds. Part of the story of the day can be told through a look into their offensive chart.
- Personnel groupings:
- 01: 6/66 (9.1%)
- 11: 51/66 (77.3%)
- 12: 5/66 (7.6%)
- 22: 4/66 (6.1%)
- As it made obvious by the above, the Steelers didn’t experiment much with their personnel packages, though that is typically the case when a team spends the vast majority of the game trailing. They saw three or more receivers on the field over 86 percent of the time on Sunday.
- The only really significant adjustment within these base groups was who was used, and when, where, and why. For the majority of the game, rookie James Washington was the number three receiver, but Ryan Switzer saw a lot of snaps in that role late in the game.
- While this move was made likely in part because they know that Washington is still learning the game, they also did this because it would more easily allow them to get JuJu Smith-Schuster out on the edge, where they felt they had a matchup they could attack.
- This adjustment began in the final 10 minutes of the game, after which Switzer played 19 snaps to Washington’s five. Of those 24 total snaps, Smith-Schuster aligned on the outside 20 times. He was targeted seven times in that span while on the outside, catching six passes for 88 yards.
- Play action was a non-factor in the game. Ben Roethlisberger used it just one time on an incompletion, and the play was negated by an illegal formation penalty anyway.
- Almost equally irrelevant was the blitz, as the Jaguars literally only blitzed twice during the entire game, such is the confidence in their front four pass rushers. And frankly, though they lost, the results bear that out, as Roethlisberger faced about as much pressure as he has seen all season.
- One of those two blitzes was on the aforementioned play-action pass that was negated by penalty. The other was the 25-yard pick slant route to Antonio Brown at the end of the game that set up the game-winning score.
- The Steelers may have only gained 2.5 yards per carry on their 10 rushes, but two personal foul penalties ended up bumping that average up to 5.5 when adding in net yards.
- Average depth of target: 7.7 (49 targets excluding spikes, 45 official)
- Vance McDonald: 2.9 (7 targets, 6 official)
- Darrius Heyward-Bey: 1 (1 target)
- Xavier Grimble: 0 (1 target)
- Antonio Brown: 14.9 (14 targets; 13 official)
- Jesse James: 0 (1 target)
- James Conner: 2.8 (9 targets)
- JuJu Smith-Schuster: 8.6 (10 targets)
- James Washington: 6 (3 targets)
- Ryan Switzer: 5 (4 targets)
