Explosion.
It’s what the Pittsburgh Steelers need offensively after two years of limited production in key departments, like explosive plays and scoring.
The Steelers managed just 52 explosive plays on the season and their 27.8 yards per play average on those 52 plays was tied for lowest in the NFL. Pittsburgh recorded just eight explosive runs last season, including just four by running backs (Jaylen Warren three, Najee Harris one).
All of that is not going to cut it in 2023.
The good news is the Steelers added some significant play-making weapons offensively this offseason, including veteran wide receiver Allen Robinson II, second-year receiver Calvin Austin III, who is returning from injury, and rookie tight end Darnell Washington.
Though the Steelers want to be a run-heavy team and shorten games by bludgeoning teams over and over again and taking their will, second-year tight end Connor Heyward, who had a couple of explosive plays through the air last season, believes that the Steelers will take more deep shots in 2023 now that key pieces like quarterback Kenny Pickett, wide receiver George Pickens and a rebuilt offensive line are all in place and more comfortable in Matt Canada’s scheme.
“We were running the ball really well towards the end of the season, and I think we’re going to be a run-heavy team this year. But I think we’ll take more shots deep when needed, because we’ve got big-play threats all over,” Heyward said to 102.5 WDVE’s Mike Prisuta during a one-on-one interview last week during minicamp. “We’ve got Calvin, George, Diontae, signing Allen Robinson and then Pat [Freiermuth]. I think we’re deep at every position, and we have some guys that can be called upon to make a play.”
Austin is likely the biggest addition to the offense, at least from an explosion standpoint. He did it quite often in college and is a true home run threat in the passing game, too.
Austin recorded an explosive play once nearly every four touches during his college career at Memphis. To be more precise, once every 3.8 touches.
If an offensive explosive play rate of 26.2% seems extremely high, that’s because it is. That high rate is made even more impressive by the fact that Austin had 164 total touches during his four seasons at Memphis. In total, Austin registered 43 explosive plays on offense in college and 13 of those resulted in touchdowns. The average length of those 43 explosive plays was 36.4 yards, which again, is quite impressive. Forty-one of those plays were receptions with the other two being runs.
Austin will be a huge boost to the offense, assuming he is healthy, as will Robinson, who was a significant downfield, contested-catch weapon throughout his career. Robinson has averaged 12.8 yards per reception in his career and his average depth of target is 12.5 yards, per Pro Football Focus.
The deep shots offensively will be keyed on the growth of Kenny Pickett in Year 2 in that area.
His arrow was clearly pointing up at the end of last season, but there are a lot of things, both big and little, for Pickett to work on in order to continue to get better entering Year 2 with the Steelers. Though it’s unclear where, exactly, his ultimate upside sits as a deep ball passer —he doesn’t have elite arm strength, though it’s far from deficient—but all the same, he has been putting in the work this offseason to improve in that aspect of his game. We’ll see if he can take that next step.
An improved offensive line that should be better in pass protection, more usage off of play-action and added weapons in the passing game could unlock another level to Pickett’s game.
If the Steelers can be that run-heavy team but have that consistency with taking deep shots and connecting and recording explosive plays, the offensive should be in much better shape in Pittsburgh and producing more points, taking some of the load off of a star-studded defense to be near-perfect each and every week.
