Welcome back for Part Two of counting down the 10 most unbreakable Steelers records. If you missed Part One, be sure to click here. I would advise reading Part One before reading this so that you can get an understanding of the format and criteria we are looking at here.
Without any more delay, let’s get into today’s records.
Number 8: Diontae Johnson’s 147 Targets Without a Touchdown
This is the only record that Steelers Nation may not be super proud of, as it was frustrating to watch Johnson not find the end zone all of last season. However, I would argue that this simply makes him the most due for positive touchdown regression anyone has experienced in NFL history. By a lot.
Johnson holds the NFL record for most targets without a touchdown, and it isn’t particularly close. Set in 2022, his 147 targets are 38 more than former Bears receiver Michael Timpson, whose 109 targets put him second all-time. The gap between Johnson and Timpson is the same as the gap between Timpson (ranking 2nd) and former Lions wideout Scottie Vines, who ranks a lowly 71st on the list. To say the season Johnson had last year is unprecedented might be an understatement. Even if you extend the criteria to two touchdowns or less, Johnson’s targets would still rank him 4th all-time.
The Steelers’ all-time record before last season was set in 1993 by wide receiver Jeff Graham with 87 targets. One big difference in the seasons of Johnson and Graham is their catch percentage. Johnson wasn’t terrible in that department last year, with a 58.5% conversion rate from targets to catches, while Graham’s struggles in this area may have contributed to him getting no touchdowns that season, as his catch rate was just 43.7%. This just stands to make Johnson’s season look even more like a fluke.
Johnson put up 20 touchdowns in his first three seasons while averaging 135 targets per season. He even ranked in the top 20 in the NFL last season for red zone targets. While it’s an unsatisfying answer, it seems he just suffered from awful luck last season and will likely return to his healthy touchdown numbers in 2023.
How would it be broken?
The Steelers had a wild amount of pass attempts for how many touchdowns they scored in 2022. Their 571 pass attempts to only 12 touchdowns have been matched only twice in the last 20 years. It would take another season like that from them for someone to approach this record. Johnson’s 16 red zone targets last year also make this such a statistical anomaly.
You would probably have to have a player who is high volume but gets no looks in the red zone to feel like there was any real chance of this happening again. Hopefully breaking down the record this way makes Steelers fans more confident in Johnson’s chances to find the end zone next season.
Number 7: 75 Straight Games With A Sack (Team)
This is a recent NFL record that the Steelers set in 2020, breaking Tampa Bay’s record of 69 straight games with a sack they had from 1999-2003.
Pittsburgh’s streak spanned from the middle of the 2016 season to the middle of the 2021 season. There were a few key components to sustaining a stretch like this. One and perhaps the most obvious, is you need good pass rushers. The Steelers have had T.J Watt, who ranked number two in the league in sacks over that span, and Cam Heyward, who also was ranked in the top 20 over that time frame. And it wasn’t just a two-man show, as guys like Bud Dupree, and Stephon Tuitt made it very difficult for teams to double Watt and Heyward without their quarterback paying the price.
Another key component is health. To maintain a streak that spans parts of five seasons you need your best pass rushers to be healthy all the time. All it takes is one week where maybe two of your top sack-getters sit with injury and you play a half-decent offensive line to break the streak. Watt and Heyward were remarkably durable during the streak. Dupree and Tuitt managed to stay on the field at a high rate as well.
It’s probably not a coincidence that 2021 was the season the streak was broken, as Dupree and Tuitt both left the team the previous offseason. Watt was unbelievable in that 2021 season with his 22.5 sacks, but to keep a streak like this you need to have consistent production up and down the roster and not just rely on one or two guys. To put this into perspective, in 2020 Watt and Heyward combined for just 34% of Pittsburgh’s sacks, compared to a whopping 59% in 2021. Obviously, the goal of an NFL season is not to check the box of getting one sack per game, but the 2020 defense was much more set up to maintain this type of streak than the 2021 team was.
And what a streak it was. The aforementioned Buccaneers were the only other NFL team to break 60 straight games, and just four NFL teams had a sack in all 17 games last year. That seems to be the norm, about four teams a year getting a sack in every game, but no team did it in both 2021 and 2022. In fact, no team even has gone sackless in just one game over the past two seasons. It seems to be getting harder and harder for teams to have multiple elite pass rushers stay both on the field and with the team for enough time to have a real shot at this streak.
How would it be broken?
For the Steelers to make a run at this streak again you would need a lot of things to happen. Watt is great, but he’s battled injuries recently, and it’s unclear if he’s going to be as durable as he was in his younger days. Alex Highsmith had 14.5 sacks last year at just 25, and he looks to be a key piece in this defense for years to come, so that’s a solid start. Heyward has been putting up fantastic sack numbers for the past few seasons, but at 33 it’s unlikely he has five more years in him to hit the 76 consecutive games needed.
Don’t get me wrong, the Steelers still have a great pass rush, but to give serious chase to a record like this there needs to be zero question marks for the short and long-term. That is what makes this record so unbreakable.
