The Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t get the opportunity to log a ton of snaps offensively on Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks. Including penalty non-plays, we have just 56 charted. But within that, they showed much more variety than was evident in the season opener against the New England Patriots, which featured all but two plays with three or more receivers on the field. Let’s start as always by breaking down the schemes.
- Personnel groupings:
- 00: 1/56 (1.8%)
- 01: 1/56 (1.8%)
- 11: 35/56 (62.5%)
- 12: 9/56 (16.1%)
- 13: 8/56 (14.3%)
- 22: 2/56 (3.6%)
- Last week, the team only used five personnel packages: 21, 11, 01, 10, and 00. This week, it was up to six, and while it lacked the two-halfback look, we did get multiple-tight end sets, and even an appearance of the fullback, which in this case was Xavier Grimble.
- We also saw the debut of the tackle-eligible, with yet another new face there. Zach Banner, now the swing tackle, has been installed into that role after Chukwuma Okorafor did it a year ago, Chris Hubbard the year before, etc. It’s a way for the team to break in young tackles and get them some live reps.
- Jaylen Samuels did get more rotational work in with James Conner this week before the latter left injured, seeing a ratio of slightly better than 1:3 in his snap count up to that point.
- I’ll be talking about this elsewhere, but it’s interesting to note who the primary beneficiary was of Donte Moncrief’s drop: rookie Diontae Johnson. He played 21 of the 24 final snaps in place of Moncrief after that, or all of the snaps played with more than one wide receiver on the field.
- The Steelers threw out of play action nine times on Sunday, seven with Mason Rudolph, including the flea-flicker. Rudolph went 5-for-7 for 53 yards and a touchdown. Ben Roethlisberger went 1-for-1 for eight yards, plus a defensive holding call that probably would have been an explosive play if not for it.
- The Seahawks did not blitz much, but were effective when they did. On six blitzes, they allowed two completions of seven and 12 yards with a batted pass, a forced throwaway, and an interception. Major caveat there, however, as the interception came on a dropped pass that should have been a third-down conversion and a potential explosive play.
- On 24 non-penalty first-down plays this week, the Steelers had eight first downs, or one in three. They had zero the week before. Two of those were first and goal from inside the three-yard line, however, and another was first and goal from the eight.
- But, hey, they did go three-for-three in the red zone.
- Average depth of target: 8 (36 targets)
- Vance McDonald – 1.7 (7 targets)
- Xavier Grimble – 4 (1 target)
- Johnny Holton – 42 (1 target)
- Jaylen Samuels – 5.5 (2 targets)
- James Conner – -2.75 (4 targets)
- JuJu Smith-Schuster – 13.6 (10 targets)
- Diontae Johnson – 10.5 (4 targets)
- James Washington – 10 (3 targets)
- Donte Moncrief – 19 (1 target)
- Ryan Switzer – 1.75 (4 targets)
