It’s time for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Now that the regular season is here, it’s time to bring back the charting notes. The Pittsburgh Steelers’ season opener against the New England Patriots was an ugly one on the field and in the scoreboard, but it’s still interesting to take a look at what the data shows us. And as always, we’ll start with a breakdown of the various personnel packages they deployed.
- Personnel groupings:
- 00: 15/69 (21.7%)
- 01: 1/69 (1.4%l
- 10: 3/69 (4.3%)
- 11: 48/69 (69.6%)
- 21: 2/69 (2.9%)
That’s right. Randy Fichtner used just five different personnel packages all game, and even then just barely. And not one time did they run out of a two-tight end set. And the two packages that they ran with multiple backs on the field included two halfbacks. Between Roosevelt Nix and Xavier Grimble, the two combined for just two offensive snaps played.
- The Steelers played with at least three wide receivers on the field very nearly constantly. That is to say, they had three or more wide receivers on the field for all but two plays, the first two plays of their third drive in the game, when they briefly used the pony package with James Conner and Jaylen Samuels on the field together.
- And they used four or more receivers on the field together 27.5 percent of the time. It’s no longer an occasional look or a change of pace. It’s a staple of their offense now. They used four- and five-receiver sets the way that three-receiver sets were used once upon a time. It’s become that extensive, building off of last season. Or at least we’ll see if it continues on in that vein. Given their available personnel, however, it’s likely.
- The Steelers did employ the no-huddle in the fourth quarter, but it didn’t go particularly well. On 11 passes, they averaged 3.5 yards per play, with three drops and two near-drops mixed in. Only four of these passes were completed, for a total of 38 yards, and 28 of that came after the catch.
- Play action? We don’t need no stinking play action. Ben Roethlisberger used it exactly once, looking for Donte Moncrief in the end zone, but the pass was broken up by Devin McCourty. I elected not to charge this as a drop, but it still should have been caught.
- Speaking of drops, I ‘officially’ charted five, three by Moncrief, one by McDonald, and one by Samuels. Moncrief, McDonald, and Diontae Johnson all had passes broken up at the catch point that they could/should have caught as well, but that I didn’t record as drops.
- I wrote in a previous article that one 24 non-penalty first-down plays, the Steelers did not achieve a single play of 10 or more yards, or a first down.
- A new element we’re tracking this year is ball location by direction. In the opener, Roethlisberger very evenly dispersed the ball both left and right and inside and outside the numbers.
- Roethlisberger was 1-for-5 for 45 yards and an interception on deep passes. He was also vulnerable to the blitz, completing just three of nine non-penalty passes for 37 yards, pretty much all of which came after the catch.
- Average depth of target: 9.28 (53 targets)
- Vance McDonald – 8 (4 targets)
- Johnny Holton – 22.5 (2 targets)
- Jaylen Samuels – 0 (3 targets)
- James Conner – 1 (4 targets)
- JuJu Smith-Schuster – 8.22 (8 targets)
- Diontae Johnson – 7.88 (8 targets)
- James Washington – 21.17 (6 targets)
- Donte Moncrief – 9.2 (10 targets)
- Ryan Switzer – 2 (6 targets)
