As we’ve moved into the 21st century, our favorite sports have evolved quite a bit. The movie Moneyball brought baseball sabermetrics into the public eye, and you can no longer watch a youth basketball game without seeing about 100 three-point shots thanks to the NBA’s transition to a three-point-centric offense.
But what’s been the development in the NFL? The obvious answer may be teams becoming more and more pass-heavy, but there’s another quiet development that is very important in its own right. A market inefficiency if you will. And the Pittsburgh Steelers are trying to take full advantage of it.
Mike Tomlin spoke on this concept at his presser yesterday, via Steelers.com:
“There’s an attention in the matchup component of the game today that you cannot deny.” Tomlin noted. “Things trend and things move in the game. The situational matchup component is big and getting bigger by the minute. You better position yourself to play that game, with depth with various skill sets. And so that’s something that we focus on.”
Situational football has become more and more important over the last few years. A simple example is how few true workhorse running backs we see in the league anymore. Some teams even have one guy who runs between the tackles, another guy who catches passes, and a third guy who takes goal-line and short-yardage carries.
This line of logic can be extended to most of the roster. When you have players who are world-class in one specific aspect of the game, a good coaching staff can get them on the field when their strengths are most relevant, and cycle them out when their weaknesses are exposed.
Assistant GM Andy Weidl also alluded to this and the team’s acquisition of rookie TE Darnell Washington in his press conference via Steelers.com.
“Darnell’s unique, right?” Weidl pointed out. “There are just not many guys that size at that position with that kind of length and that kind of athletic ability and strength that he has. And it was an opportunity to get a player like that who is 21 years old. We’re gonna look at every one of those players that are unusual. Guys who are testing or their physicality or their attributes are different.”
Washington obviously has elite size and the potential to be an elite blocker in the NFL. Other recent acquisitions for the Steelers fit the bill of having these carrying attributes as well.
Take LB Tanner Muse. He tested off the charts at the 2020 NFL Combine with a 4.41 40-yard dash at 6-2 and 227 pounds. He didn’t get a ton of action on defense through his first few years in the league, but his unique blend of size and speed makes him a great situation special teams guy.
And then there’s WR Calvin Austin III. At just 5-9 and 162 pounds, a lot of teams were scared to take a chance on Austin in the draft, figuring that he may never be an every-down starting wide receiver. But the Steelers took a chance, knowing they can deploy him in a number of ways such as jet sweeps, screens, the return game and obviously on fly routes. Even if he’s not giving them a high volume of snaps, his elite speed and elusiveness can make the quality of the snaps he does get very high.
Some of these guys won’t hit, and their weaknesses will be too much to overcome. But all reports from training camp have loved the amount of depth and flexibility the 2023 Steelers will have, which in the modern NFL, is a great thing.
